BY 

ARTHUR    G.   BENSON 

FELLOW   OF   MAGDALENE   COLLEGE 
CAMBRIDGE 

THE  UPTON   LETTERS 

FROM   A  COLLEGE 
WINDOW 

BESIDE  STILL  WATERS 
THE  ALTAR  FIRE 
THE  .  SCHOOLMASTER 
AT  LARGE 

THE  GATE  OF  DEATH 
THE  SILENT  ISLE 


RUSKIN 

A  STUDY  IN  PERSONALITY 


BY 
ARTHUR  CHRISTOPHER  BENSON 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 


.     .     .     et  vox  priina,  quam  audivi,  tamquam  tubae, 
loquentis  mecum,  dicens  :  Ascende  hue  et 
ostendam  tibi  quae  oportet  fieri  post  haec. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  ftND  LONDON 
fmicfcerbocfcer  press 
1911 


COPYRIGHT,   1911 

BY 

ARTHUR  CHRISTOPHER  BENSON 


the  fmfcfccrbocher  press,  flew  .1  Jorfe 


STUART   ALEXANDER   DONALDSON 
MASTER  OF  MAGDALENE  COLLEGE 

THIS  BOOK 

IS  BY  HIS  OLD  FRIEND  AND  COLLEAGUE 
RESPECTFULLY  AND  AFFECTIONATELY  DEDICATED 


2022753 


PREFACE 

THE  following  volume  consists  of  seven 
lectures  on  the  life  and  work  of  Euskin, 
delivered  in  the  Hall  of  Magdalene  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  in  the  Michaelmas  term 
of  1910.  I  had  intended  vaguely  to  recast 
them  in  a  more  formal  shape;  not  because 
they  were  not  carefully  compiled  and  com- 
posed, but  because  they  were  written  as 
lectures  to  be  heard,  and  not  as  a  book 
to  be  read.  But  I  found  on  reflection  that 
this  would  entail  rewriting  the  whole  book 
on  an  entirely  different  scheme.  Nor  in- 
deed do  I  think  that  another  small  bio- 
graphy of  Euskin  is  required,  though  a  great 
and  full  biography  of  him  is  needed,  and 
is  being  written,  I  understand,  by  Mr.  E. 
T.  Cook,  the  editor  of  the  large  standard 
series  of  Euskin's  complete  works.  The 


vi  Preface 

situation  is,  of  course,  at  present  some- 
what complicated  by  nearness  of  view  and 
considerations  of  personal  intimacies;  but 
the  time  is  not  far  off  when  we  shall  be 
able  to  realise  what  the  ultimate  effect  of 
his  work  and  message  has  been  upon  the 
world. 

I  felt  then  that  these  lectures  might,  as 
lectures,  have  a  certain  freshness  which 
they  would  lose  if  transmuted  into  a  treat- 
ise; and  they  must  be  looked  upon  rather 
as  an  attempt  to  emphasise  and  bring  home 
certain  salient  features  and  characteristics 
of  the  man  than  as  an  attempt  at  synthesis 
and  summary.  This  book  is,  accordingly, 
a  sketch  and  not  a  finished  portrait;  it 
is  frankly  compiled  from  accessible  sources ; 
but  it  is  written  with  a  sincere  love  and 
admiration,  and  with  a  strong  belief  that 
Kuskin's  message  and  example  have  a  very 
real  truth  and  strength  of  their  own,  ur- 
gently needed  in  these  hasty  and  impulsive 
days.  It  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  the 
fame  and  name  of  Kuskin  are  eclipsed,  but 


Preface  vii 

his  works  have  passed  into  that  region  of 
deferential  acceptance,  in  which  they  are 
more  respected  than  examined,  and  more 
reverenced  than  read;  and  this  state  of 
things  I  earnestly  desire  to  alter.  I  have 
written  these  pages,  then,  with  the  hope  of 
provoking  a  discriminating  interest  in  the 
man's  life  and  work,  and  with  the  wish  to 
present  a  picture  of  one  of  the  most  sug- 
gestive thinkers,  the  most  beautiful  writers, 
and  the  most  vivid  personalities  of  the  last 
generation. 

ARTHUR  C.  BENSON. 

THE  OLD  LODGE, 

MAGDALENE  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE, 
Feb.  17,  1911. 


NOTE 

My  thanks  and  acknowledgments  are  due  to  Mr.  Alexander 
Wedderburn,  K.C.,  and  Mr.  E.  T.  Cook,  not  only  for  gen- 
erous permission  to  reproduce  copyright  material,  but  for 
many  criticisms  and  suggestions;  to  Mr.  Sydney  C.  Cocker  ell, 
Director  of  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum  at  Cambridge,  who  has 
read  the  book  in  proof,  and  given  me  kind  advice  and  com- 
ment ;  to  Professor  Collingwood  and  Mrs.  Meynell,  for  free 
permission  to  make  use  of  their  respective  volumes ;  to  Mrs. 
Arthur  Severn  for  approval  and  encouragement;  and  to  Mrs. 
Vincent  for  careful  revision  and  criticism. 

A.  C.  B. 


RUSKIN 

A  STUDY  IN  PERSONALITY 


Ruskin:    A  Study  in 
Personality 


BEFORE  I  begin  to  speak  of  the  life  and 
work  of  Ruskin,  I  must  suggest  to  you  a 
few  books  which  it  would  be  an  advantage 
to  you  to  read,  or  at  all  events  to  glance 
at.  Ruskin's  was  a  long  life,  full  of  work 
and  energy,  and  moreover  he  came  into 
contact  with  many  very  prominent  and 
active  persons,  to  whom  I  shall  be  bound 
to  allude.  It  will  therefore  be  difficult  for 
you  to  follow  the  drama  of  his  life  with- 
out knowing  something  about  the  people 
with  whom  he  came  into  close  touch. 


2  Ruskin 

There  is  an  admirable  Life  of  Ruskin  by 
Professor  Collingwood,  from  which  I  shall 
have  occasion  to  quote,  and  to  which  I  am 
much  indebted.  Professor  Collingwood  was 
Ruskin's  secretary  for  some  years.  The 
Life  is  both  faithful  and  picturesque,  and 
much  enriched  by  appropriate  quotations, 
though  much  material  now  accessible  was 
not  then  available.  But  the  effect  of  Rus- 
kin was  so  overpowering  upon  his  im- 
mediate circle  that  Professor  Collingwood, 
in  his  devotion  and  piety,  and  with  the 
memory  of  his  hero  so  fresh  and  vivid  in 
his  mind,  could  not  possibly  be  frankly 
critical.  The  book  is  certainly  by  far  the 
best  existing  study  of  Ruskin's  life  and 
personality,  and  my  debt  to  it,  throughout 
all  the  biographical  part  of  these  lectures, 
is  obvious  and  great. 

Then  there  is  a  stimulating  and  sugges- 
tive monograph  by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 
in  the  Men  of  Letters  series.  Mr.  Harri- 
son combines  an  intense  admiration  for 
Ruskin  with  a  power  of  clear-sighted  and 


A  Study  in  Personality  3 

judicious  criticism.  The  only  point  about 
the  volume  which  does  not  seem  to  me 
wholly  satisfactory  is  its  scale  and  pro- 
portion. But  of  course  this  is  a  matter 
of  individual  taste  and  judgment,  and  the 
book  undoubtedly  contains  the  best  critical 
estimate  of  Ruskin,  and  is  very  just  and 
illuminating. 

Then  there  is  a  charming  sketch  of  the 
intimate  side  of  Ruskin's  personality,  by 
Lady  Ritchie,  Thackeray's  daughter,  in  a 
little  volume  called  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  and 
Browning. 

There  is  a  readable  book  called  Ruskin 
and  his  Circle,,  by  Miss  Earland,  which 
furnishes  a  good  background  for  the  life. 

There  is  also  a  little  book  in  the  Modern 
English  Writers  series,  by  Mrs.  Meynell, 
which  gives  an  able  and  judicious  sum- 
mary of  Ruskin's  principal  writings.  The 
book  is  highly  concentrated,  and  the  style, 
which  maintains  a  high  level  of  literary 
beauty,  is  almost  inevitably  allusive  and 
even  intricate.  I  would  warmly  recom- 


4  Ruskin 

mend  the  book  to  any  one  who  wishes  to 
grasp  the  drift  and  inner  spirit  of  Ruskin's 
writings.  And  I  would  here  express  my 
own  sense  of  high  obligation  to  the  vol- 
ume, for  the  guidance  which,  in  its  sug- 
gestiveness,  it  has  afforded  me. 

Of  course  I  need  hardly  say  that  to  get 
any  real  conception  of  the  scope  of  Rus- 
kin's work  it  is  advisable  to  read  some  of 
his  own  books.  I  can  hardly  expect  that 
many  of  my  hearers  will  work  faithfully 
through  the  great  edition  in  thirty-seven 
volumes.  It  is  a  monumental  work,  full 
of  exact  information  and  elaborate  refer- 
ences; the  introductions  are  admirably 
written,  and  the  pictorial  illustrations  are 
excellent.  But  fortunately  most  of  the 
best-known  works  are  available  in  cheaper 
and  lighter  editions.  And  so  I  would  ask 
my  hearers  to  read  if  possible  the  Pr&terita 
of  Ruskin,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  books 
in  the  English  language,  an  autobiography 
which  he  never  finished. 

I  would  also  ask  you  to  read  Sesame  and 


A  Study  in  Personality  5 

Lilies,  a  book  about  books,  which  gives  a 
fine  example  of  his  style  and  of  his  thought. 
And  those  who  wish  to  get  an  idea  of 
Ruskin's  economical  theories  must  carefully 
read  his  book,  Unto  this  Last,  without 
which  it  is  impossible  to  understand  his 
principles.  And  further,  any  one  who  is 
interested  in  his  artistic  ideas  might  find 
it  possible  to  read  the  little  shilling  book 
published  by  George  Allen — The  Nature  of 
Gothic — which  is  a  chapter  out  of  The 
Stones  of  Venice,  and  has  the  immense  ad- 
vantage of  having  a  short  preface  by 
William  Morris,  which  emphasises  both 
forcibly  and  beautifully  the  strong  points  of 
Ruskin's  art-teaching.  Of  course  I  hope 
that  those  who  get  so  far  will  be  inclined 
to  go  further  afield;  because  lectures  like 
these  are  not  intended  to  give  a  sub- 
stitute for  Ruskin,  in  a  tabloid  form,  but 
to  act  if  possible  as  an  invitation  to 
study  the  man's  own  heart  and  mind;  for 
no  one  ever  gave  so  prodigally  of  both  to 
his  readers  as  Ruskin  did,  or,  as  the 


6  Ruskin 

old  text  says,  so  laid  his  "  body  as  the 
ground,  and  as  the  street,  to  them  that 
went  over." 


John  Ruskin  was  born  at  54  Hunter 
Street,  Brunswick  Square,  on  the  8th  of 
February,  1819.  You  may  pass  the  house 
any  day  driving  west  from  St.  Pancras  or 
King's  Cross.  The  street  is  a  semi-respect- 
able one;  parts  of  it  are  sordid  and  poverty- 
stricken,  but  as  it  draws  near  to  Brunswick 
Square  it  settles  down  to  a  drab  and  dingy 
decorum,  very  characteristic  of  our  great 
metropolis ;  and  the  house  itself  is  precisely 
and  typically  the  very  house  in  which  you 
wrould  not  expect  so  rare  a  flower  of  genius 
to  bloom,  and  least  of  all  adapted  to  nur- 
ture a  passionate  lover  of  beauty.  But  I 
never  pass  the  place  without  a  thrill  of 
pleasure  that  there  should  have  been  born 
just  there,  on  that  particular  spot  of  the 
earth  and  no  other,  where  the  sooty  yellow- 
brick  geometrical  house-fronts  rise  into  the 


A  Study  in  Personality  7 

smoke-stained  skies  of  London,  one  who  was 
to  love  so  intensely  the  earth  and  all  that 
grows  out  of  the  earth,  and  lies  hid  in  it 
—both  its  hills  and  forests,  its  plains  and 
lakes,  as  well  as  its  trees  and  flowers,  its 
rocks  and  mineral  forms — and  not  only 
these;  for  the  child  that  was  born  in  that 
unlovely  street  was  to  love,  with  the  kind 
of  love  that  most  men  reserve  for  mistress 
or  child,  the  stately  cities  of  the  world,  their 
churches  and  palaces,  their  facades  and 
columns;  and  not  only  to  love  them  and 
grieve  over  their  ruin  and  restoration  alike, 
but  to  interpret  their  loveliness  to  others, 
and  multiply  that  sense  of  beauty  a 
thousand-fold. 

That  house  is  now  distinguished  from  the 
rest  by  a  tablet,  a  disc  like  the  top  of  a 
chocolate  birthday-cake,  with  a  record 
meanly  written.  I  am  glad  too  that  it 
should  be  so  ugly  and  sensible  a  halo.  The 
worshippers  of  Ruskin  might  perhaps  have 
put  up  some  so-called  appropriate  design, 
— an  angel  holding  on  to  a  balustrade,  or 


8  Ruskin 

a  Delia  Robbia  plaque,  to  be  grimed  and 
stained  by  London  smoke.  But  I  rejoice 
that  when  we  build  the  sepulchre  of  a 
prophet  to  whom  we  would  not  listen,  we 
should  do  it  in  our  own  solid  and  com- 
mercial spirit,  reckoning  his  reputation  as 
a  national  asset,  and  grudging  him  to  other 
nations,  not  because  we  prize  his  sweet  and 
noble  spirit,  but  because  he  brings  money 
and  credit  into  the  country;  just  as  the 
townsmen  of  Assisi  hurried  St.  Francis 
home  that  he  might  die  there,  not  because 
they  could  not  bear  that  others  should  see 
his  pain,  or  for  love  of  his  parting  smiles, 
but  because  they  wanted  to  have  authentic 
miracles  of  their  owm. 

The  father  of  John  Kuskin  was  a  man 
of  sterling  virtue,  an  excellent  man  of 
business,  a  wine-merchant,  as  his  father 
was  before  him.  With  this  difference,  that 
his  father  lost  a  fortune  and  died  in- 
solvent; while  the  son  not  only  paid  his 
father's  debts,  but  left  a  fortune  of  nearly 
two  hundred  thousand  pounds.  But  he 


A  Study  in  Personality  9 

was  not  only  "  an  entirely  honest  mer- 
chant," as  the  inscription  on  his  tomb  runs; 
he  was  also  a  man  of  taste  and  serious 
culture,  a  lover  of  good  books  and  pictures 
and  scenery,  and  transmitted  to  his  son  a 
deep  and  perfectly  natural  passion  for 
beautiful  things  and  beautiful  thoughts. 
The  mother  must  be  confessed  to  have  been 
a  grim  figure,  with  an  intense  devotion 
to  her  home  circle,  and  an  unconcealed 
contempt  for  the  sloppiness  of  people  in 
general.  Ruskin  gave  many  tender  and 
humorous  reminiscences  of  her  in  later  life. 
He  wrote  once  of  her :  "  I  don't  think 
women  were  in  general  meant  to  reason. 
I  never  knew  but  one  rational  woman  in 
my  life,  and  that  is  my  own  mother  (when 
one  does  n't  talk  about  actors  or  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, or  anybody  she  has  taken  an  anti- 
pathy to)."  He  recorded  too  that  he  had 
often  seen  his  mother  travelling  from  sun- 
rise to  sunset  of  a  summer's  day  without 
ever  leaning  back  in  the  carriage.  And  he 
wrote  in  Prwterita:  "  Whenever  I  did  any- 


io  Ruskin 

thing  wrong  or  stupid  or  hard-hearted 
<• — and  I  have  done  many  things  that 
were  all  three — my  mother  always  said, 
'  It  is  because  you  were  too  much  ir- 
dulged.' ' 

Much  that  is  tedious  has  been  written 
about  the  origin  of  the  family — tedious, 
because  at  present  we  know  so  little  about 
heredity  and  descent.  Some  day,  no  doubt, 
when  Mendelisrn  and  eugenics  are  per- 
fected, we  shall  breed  a  genius  as  easily 
as  we  breed  a  greyhound.  And  doubtless 
the  secret  of  Buskin's  greatness  is  hidden 
safely  enough  in  his  austere  pedigree.  But 
there  are  one  or  two  points  of  real  inter- 
est about  it.  The  name  itself  is  of  doubt- 
ful origin;  and  it  matters  little  whether  it 
is  the  same  word  as  Erskine,  or  a  mere 
nickname,  Roughskin,  or  whether  it  is  a 
diminutive,  meaning  the  little  red  man. 
But  it  falls  under  the  law  which  seems  to 
assign  to  English  men  of  genius  quaint, 
striking,  or  beautiful  names — and  this  is 
especially  true  of  great  writers;  there  is 


A  Study  in  Personality         n 

hardly  a  great  English  writer  who  has  not 
borne  a  seemly  name. 

And  then,  too,  there  is  another  point 
Ruskin  was  the  son  of  first  cousins.  This 
is  apt  to  produce  disasters  of  constitution, 
but  it  also  produces  greatness,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  such  an  origin  tends 
to  accentuate  and  emphasise  whatever 
qualities  are  there,  by  simple  accumulation. 
If  Ruskin  owed  to  his  birth  the  terrible 
mental  collapse  of  his  later  life,  it  was  per- 
haps the  natural  price  he  paid  for  his  force 
and  swiftness  of  spirit.  And  in  this  re- 
spect men  of  a  later  date,  comfortably 
flattened  out  by  eugenics  into  an  even  paste 
of  virtue  and  efficiency,  may  look  back 
with  a  romantic  regret  to  the  days  when 
irregularities  of  temperament  were  made 
possible  by  our  want  of  sense  and 
knowledge. 

Then,  too,  Ruskin  was  three  parts  Scotch, 
and  what  is  more,  Lowland  Scotch.  It  can- 
not be  mere  chance  that  so  many  of  our 
most  forcible  later  writers,  such  as  Car- 


12  Ruskin 

lyle  and  Walter  Scott  and  Stevenson,  have 
been  sealed  of  the  same  tribe.  I  believe 
myself  that  the  temperament  of  the  Low- 
land Scotch  is  at  once  fiery  and  restrained, 
that  it  is  naturally  eloquent  and  emotional 
and  religious,  not  sentimentally,  but  with 
a  certain  uplifted  solemnity  of  heart;  and 
then,  too,  the  Lowland  Scotch  vocabulary  is 
a  singularly  rich  and  elastic  one,  with  all 
the  resources  of  English,  and  with  many 
fine  indigenous  words.  It  is  at  least  cer- 
tain, in  Buskin's  case,  that  he  owed  much 
to  his  inflexible  Biblical  training,  of  which 
I  will  speak  in  detail  later.  One  whose 
memory  was  so  retentive,  and  whose  ear 
for  the  music  of  words  so  sensitive,  did 
indisputably  gain  an  incredible  mastery  of 
cadence  and  serious  rhetoric  from  the  re- 
strained economy  and  the  noble  passion  of 
Scriptural  traditions.  To  tell  a  story  with 
austere  simplicity  and  stately  directness; 
to  be  denunciatory  without  being  abusive; 
to  be  indignant  without  ever  losing  self- 
control;  not  to  be  ashamed  of  deep  and 


A  Study  in  Personality         13 

grand  emotion;  never  to  deviate  into  com- 
monness or  verbiage — these  were  some  of 
the  things  that  Ruskin  acquired  from  his 
Bible  reading;  and  this  was  a  direct  con- 
sequence of  his  Scotch  descent. 

And  lastly,  I  have  always  thought  it  a 
supreme  blessing  that  by  birth  and  family 
he  touched  both  ends  of  the  social  scale. 
A  Scotchman  never  loses  a  certain  pride 
of  birth,  however  menial  his  state  may  be. 
Ruskin  could  trace  his  descent  to  more 
than  one  baronial  family — the  blood  of  old 
Robin  Adair  ran  in  his  veins;  but  his  grand- 
mother kept  an  inn  at  Croydon;  his  aunt 
was  married  to  a  baker  of  the  same  place; 
his  father's  sister  married  a  tanner  of  Perth. 
I  have  a  feeling  that  Ruskin  did  not  quite 
like  the  homeliness  of  these  associations; 
but  with  a  noble  sort  of  loyalty  he  not 
only  did  not  disguise  the  facts,  but  put 
them  prominently  and  literally  forward. 
And  it  was  perhaps  the  best  point  about 
his  sheltered  and  secluded  upbringing,  that 
he  was  brought  so  closely  into  contact  with 


14  Ruskin 

simple  people  and  lowly  ways.  It  gave 
him  an  enormous  power  of  making  friend- 
ships rather  than  condescending  alliances 
with  servants  and  ordinary  folk,  and  taught 
him  to  recognise  that  refined  feeling  and 
generous  qualities  are  not  the  private  pro- 
perty and  the  monopoly  of  well-to-do  per- 
sons. Of  course  in  these  democratic  days 
we  know  that  "  the  rank  is  but  the  guinea- 
stamp'';  but  how  many  of  us  act  upon  it? 
How  many  of  us  would  sincerely  prefer 
to  be  befriended  by  a  high-minded  green- 
grocer rather  than  to  be  tolerated  by  a 
commonplace  Viscount?  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  feudal  deference  in  our  subconscious 
instincts  still — and  the  melancholy  fact  re- 
mains that  we  follow  very  faithfully  the 
Scriptural  precept  to  make  to  ourselves 
friends  of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness ; 
and  if  we  fail,  there  are  always  the  ever- 
lasting habitations! 

The  point  really  is  that  Ruskin,  by  being 
brought  up  in  a  simple  household  where 
the  servants  were  friends  rather  than  hired 


A  Study  in  Personality         15 

assistants,  and  having  never  learnt  to  keep 
his  distance,  did  undoubtedly  learn  what 
rich  people  often  do  not  learn,  to  meet 
men  and  women  of  every  class  on  perfectly 
equal  and  natural  terms ;  and  made  friends 
accordingly  with  all,  as  far  as  it  was  in 
his  power  to  make  friends.  For  what 
strikes  one  as  much  as  anything  about 
Euskin  is  that,  in  spite  of  his  charm  and 
grace  and  eager  courtesy,  he  was  an  es- 
sentially lonely  man;  partly  because  of  his 
dreams — a  dreamer  can  never  be  very  in- 
timate with  others — and  partly,  too,  because 
he  gave  his  heart  away  to  beauty;  and  we 
have  none  of  us  more  than  a  certain  amount 
of  love  to  give  away.  Thus  the  artist  who 
must  put  not  his  mind  only  but  his  heart 
into  his  work  must  always  have  something 
incommunicable  about  him,  beyond  the 
reach  of  human  fellowship. 

In  most  respects,  at  first  sight,  there 
was  nothing  characteristically  Scotch  about 
Ruskin ;  the  typical  Scot  is  apt  to  be  a 
little  grim,  a  little  unapproachable;  genial 


16  Ruskin 

he  can  be  after  a  solid  fashion;  but  he  has 
little  of  the  emotional  abandon  of  the  Celt, 
and  little  of  the  sentimentality  of  the  Eng- 
lishman. A  character  in  the  Frogs  of 
Aristophanes,  when  he  thinks  he  is  being 
unreasonably  dictated  to,  says:  "Don't 
come  trespassing  on  my  mind — you  have 
a  house  of  your  own."  And  the  typical 
Scot  has  the  same  detachment.  He  will 
never,  for  instance,  allow  emotion  to  in- 
vade business.  He  is  canny,  in  fact.  But 
Euskin  was  not  superficially  canny.  He 
met  people,  young  and  old  alike,  with  a 
delightful  welcome  and  open  arms.  He 
had  an  almost  caressing  address,  and  a 
cordial  sweetness  of  manner.  He  was 
quixotically  generous  about  money;  there 
can  have  been  few  men  who  have  ever  given 
away  in  their  lifetime  so  large  a  fortune. 
But  there  was  a  good  deal  of  dogmatism 
and  sternness  behind,  as  his  letters  abun- 
dantly show;  he  had  no  slobbering  chajrity 
for  the  world,  or  for  the  mistakes  and  fail- 
ures of  humanity.  He  was  a  merciless 


A  Study  in  Personality         17 

judge  of  frailty,  and  had  the  sceva  indig- 
natio  of  the  satirist.  He  was,  too,  in  his 
way  a  wary  man  of  business;  he  made  in 
later  years  as  large  an  income  by  his  books 
as  he  would  have  derived  from  his  departed 
capital.  He  trod  the  narrow  path  between 
sentiment  and  silliness,  saving  himself  from 
the  former  by  causticity  and  from  the  latter 
by  dryness.  He  did  many  things  that 
seemed  alien  to  common-sense,  but  when 
he  let  himself  go  it  was  rather  in  the 
direction  of  condemnation  than  in  the  di- 
rection of  forgiveness.  He  was  more  on 
the  side  of  punishment  and  obedience  than 
on  the  side  of  rewards  and  freedom.  And 
then,  too,  he  had  the  spirit  of  loyalty  and 
fidelity  to  lost  causes  and  forlorn  hopes, 
the  spirit  that  has  come  out  again  and 
again  in  Scotch  history.  And  thus  the  re- 
sult of  our  investigation  is  that  though  a 
man  of  genius  is  a  unique  thing,  and  must 
be  judged  on  his  own  merits,  yet  there 
are  a  good  many  traceable  elements  in 
the  character  and  temperament  of  Ruskin 


i8  Ruskin 

which    he   owed    to    his    race   and   to    his 
nationality. 


I  shall  not  here  attempt  to  tell  the  story 
of  Ruskin's  early  life  in  any  detail.  My 
chief  reason  is  that  it  has  been  told  with 
such  inimitable  grace  and  felicity  in  his 
PrcKterita  that  it  is  impossible  to  retell  it. 
But  a  few  points  must  be  noted.  When 
he  was  four  years  old  his  portrait  was 
painted  by  Northcote,  the  R.A.,  of  whom 
he  inquired,  after  sitting  for  a  few  min- 
utes, why  there  were  holes  in  the  carpet; 
and  when  the  little  boy  was  asked  by  the 
old  painter  what  he  would  have  as  the 
background,  he  said  "  Blue  hills,"  which  is 
a  significant  reply.  He  was  fond,  too,  of 
preaching  sermons  from  a  convenient  chair- 
back.  "  People,  be  good,"  ran  the  first 
sentence  of  the  first  recorded  address.  It 
was  what  he  was  saying  for  the  rest  of 
his  life,  though  he  varied  the  expression 
a  little! 


A  Study  in  Personality         19 

A  few  words  must  be  said  as  to  his  edu- 
cation; it  was  absolutely  unconventional, 
and  though  human  temperament  has  a  way 
of  surviving  a  good  many  rough  experi- 
ments in  communicating  bias,  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  see  that  his  nurture  affected 
him.  In  one  respect  his  upbringing  was 
ascetic.  He  had  very  few  toys,  he  had  to 
learn  to  amuse  himself  on  the  simplest 
lines;  he  was  soundly  whipped  whenever 
he  was  naughty  or  wilful,  and  he  was  shel- 
tered to  an  extraordinary  extent  from  all 
external  influences.  He  says  that  he  never 
saw  his  parents  lose  their  temper,  or  heard 
their  voices  raised  in  anger,  or  saw  even 
a  glance  of  irritation  pass  between  them, 
but  that  he  suffered  from  having  nothing 
to  love.  He  states  that  he  no  more  loved 
his  parents  than  he  would  the  sun  and 
moon.  They  were  just  a  part  of  the  order 
of  the  universe.  But  people  cannot  be 
taught  love,  any  more  than  they  can  be 
prevented  from  loving;  and  it  is  clear  that 
his  preternatural  activity  of  observation 


2O  Ruskin 

and  intelligence  were  what  really  drained 
his  emotions.  He  read  the  Bible  witli  his 
mother,  chapter  by  chapter;  whether  they 
were  genealogical  or  improper,  it  mattered 
nothing.  He  was  taught  to  draw,  and  he 
was  dangerously  encouraged  to  wrrite.  The 
day  was  seldom  long  enough  for  all  he  had 
to  do.  He  wrote  poetry  and  diaries  and 
compilations.  Indeed,  through  the  whole 
of  his  early  life  his  bent  and  his  ambitions 
were  poetical,  though  he  hardly  ever  wrote 
a  line  of  verse  which  is  worth  preserving 
on  its  intrinsic  merits.  He  had  no  poetical 
invention  whatever,  and  very  little  sense  of 
rhythm.  He  had  constant  illnesses,  and 
was  never  sent  to  school ;  and  he  thus  lived 
a  very  comfortable  and  self-centred  life  with 
the  two  elderly  parents,  saved  from  dis- 
content by  intense  activity  of  mind  and 
great  sweetness  of  disposition.  His  father's 
health  wras  not  good;  he  travelled  con- 
stantly, both  for  business  and  pleasure,  col- 
lecting orders  for  sherry,  and  visiting 
scenes  and  places  of  interest.  Ruskin  gained 


A  Study  in  Personality         21 

in  this  atmosphere  one  remarkable  char- 
acteristic, the  power  of  applying  himself  to 
his  work  with  complete  absorption,  wher- 
ever he  might  happen  to  be.  His  father 
intended  him  for  the  Church,  and  hoped 
to  see  him  a  Bishop;  but  he  was  to  preach 
to  a  larger  audience  than  a  diocese  could 
afford,  and  on  wider  lines  than  those  of 
orthodox  Anglicanism.  But  besides  all  this 
dilettante  literature  and  sketching,  he 
worked  seriously  enough  at  problems  of 
geology  and  mineralogy.  And  he  lived,  too, 
in  an  atmosphere  of  culture;  the  family 
had  moved  out  of  London  to  Herne  Hill, 
then  a  pleasant  leafy  suburb  on  the  edge 
of  the  open  country.  His  father  bought 
pictures,  and  entertained  artists  and  inter- 
esting people  in  a  quiet  way.  It  was  a 
thoroughly  precocious  childhood,  but  one 
dares  not  say  what  should  have  been 
altered.  Probably  he  lived  too  much  with 
his  elders,  and  thus  acquired  a  certain 
touch  of  old-maidishness  which  never  left 
him.  There  was  lacking  an  element,  not 


22  Ruskin 

of  virility,  but  of  masculinity;  and  then, 
too,  his  mental  activity  was  perilously 
stimulated.  Perhaps  the  irritability  of  brain 
which  worked  havoc  in  his  later  life  was 
partly  caused  by  his  prodigious  precocity; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  atmosphere  of 
school  life  might  have  given  him  conven- 
tional standards  and  taken  the  edge  off 
his  originality;  and  one  is  thankful  for 
the  net  result,  whatever  its  drawbacks  may 
have  been. 
As  he  wrote  in  Prceterita: 

I  was  different,  be  it  once  more  said,  from 
other  children  even  of  my  own  type,  not  so 
much  in  the  actual  nature  of  the  feeling,  but 
in  the  mixture  of  it.  I  had,  in  my  little  clay 
pitcher,  vialfuls,  as  it  were,  of  Wordsworth's 
reverence,  Shelley's  sensitiveness,  Turner's  ac- 
curacy, all  in  one.  A  snowdrop  was  to  me, 
as  to  Wordsworth,  part  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount;  but  I  never  should  have  written 
sonnets  to  the  celandine,  because  it  is  of  a 
coarse  yellow,  and  imperfect  form. 

He  fell  deeply  in  love  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen with  the  daughter  of  his  father's  part- 


A  Study  in  Personality         23 

ner,  Mr.  Domecq.  Adele  Domecq  was  a 
French  girl,  brought  up  in  the  best  Parisian 
society,  and  a  Roman  Catholic.  She  and 
her  sister  came  to  stay  at  Herne  Hill,  and 
Ruskin  fell  a  victim  to  a  Byronic  passion, 
accompanied  by  intense  self-consciousness. 
The  lively  girls  thought  the  clever  boy 
rather  a  queer  creature,  and  could  not 
make  him  out;  but  it  was  a  serious  and 
devastating  business,  lasting  for  three  years, 
and  the  result  was  a  serious  breakdown 
in  health  with  symptoms  of  consumption. 

Meanwhile  he  had  been  entered  at  Christ 
Church;  and  here  again  his  parents  be- 
haved with  characteristic  prudence.  He  was 
made  a  Gentleman-commoner,  which  threw 
him  into  the  society  of  the  richest  and  most 
fashionable  undergraduates;  and  his  mother 
came  up  to  Oxford  to  look  after  him.  The 
danger  was  that  he  would  become  a  gigantic 
joke;  but  his  amazing  simplicity  and  charm 
triumphed  over  all  obstacles.  He  wras  half 
tolerated  and  half  petted;  but  he  made 
firm  friends  both  among  younger  and  older 


24  Ruskin 

men;  he  won  the  Newdigate  Prize  Poem, 
and  he  plunged  into  print  in  the  region 
of  artistic  controversy.  He  described  his 
view  of  the  Oxford  life  very  characteristic- 
ally in  Pr&terita: 

I  am  amused,  as  I  look  back,  in  now  per- 
ceiving what  an  aesthetic  view  I  had  of  all 
my  tutors  and  companions — how  consistently 
they  took  to  me  the  aspect  of  pictures,  and 
how  I  from  the  first  declined  giving  any  at- 
tention to  those  which  were  not  well  painted 
enough.  My  ideal  of  a  tutor  was  founded  on 
what  Holbein  or  Dtirer  had  represented  in 
Erasmus  or  Melanchthon,  or,  even  more 
solemnly,  on  Titian's  Magnificoes  or  Boni- 
fazio's  Bishops.  No  presences  of  that  kind 
appeared  either  in  Tom  or  Peckwater;  and 
even  Doctor  Pusey  (who  also  never  spoke  to 
me)  was  not  in  the  least  a  picturesque  or 
tremendous  figure,  but  only  a  sickly  and  rather 
ill  put  together  English  clerical  gentleman, 
who  never  looked  one  in  the  face,  or  appeared 
aware  of  the  state  of  the  weather. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  his  father  began 
to  buy  Turner's  pictures,  and  Kuskin  made 
the  acquaintance  of  the  great  artist  whose 


A  Study  in  Personality         25 

fame  he  was  afterwards  to  establish  on  so 
secure  a  basis.     He  wrote: 

I  found  in  him  a  somewhat  eccentric,  keen- 
mannered,  matter-of-fact,  English-minded  gen- 
tleman; good-natured  evidently,  bad-tempered 
evidently,  hating  humbug  of  all  sorts,  shrewd, 
perhaps  a  little  selfish,  highly  intellectual,  the 
powers  of  the  mind  not  brought  out  with  any 
delight  in  their  manifestations,  or  intention 
of  display,  but  flashing  out  occasionally  in  a 
word  or  a  look. 

The  account  of  his  early  years  forms  an 
extraordinary  record  of  vigour  and  en- 
thusiasm; but  all  this  was  suspended  by 
his  breakdown  in  health,  caused  undoubt- 
edly by  his  love  affair,  and  thus  there  fell 
on  him  in  the  middle  of  all  his  prosperity 
the  first  initiation  into  suffering  of  body 
and  mind,  the  first  taste  of  the  cup  of 
which  he  was  afterwards  to  drink  so  deep. 
But  he  recovered,  and  finished  his  time  at 
Oxford;  and  it  was  then  he  learnt,  as  if 
by  accident,  his  first  lesson  in  that  prin- 
ciple of  art  which  he  was  afterwards  to 
extol  so  matchlessly.  It  came  in  a  drawing- 


26  Ruskin 

lesson,  where  he  made  a  study  of  an 
ivy  tendril.  Up  to  that  time  he  had  in- 
stinctively submitted  to  the  artistic  fallacy 
of  the  day,  which  treated  artistic  material 
as  a  thing  to  be  manipulated  and  composed 
on  conventional  lines.  It  struck  him  that 
nature  was  not  to  be  improved  upon,  and 
that  absolute  sincerity  and  fidelity  were  the 
first  articles  of  the  artistic  creed.  With 
what  matchless  rhetoric  he  persuaded  him- 
self and  others  to  believe  that  Turner,  who 
idealises  landscape  beyond  all  power  of 
recognition  and  identification,  was  the  su- 
preme exponent  of  this  principle  we  shall 
see  later.  But  this  little  incident  was  the 
first  step  on  the  ladder  that  he  was  about 
to  climb,  and  must  be  allowed  its  due  signi- 
ficance. And  it  was  then  that  he  aban- 
doned all  his  dilettante  pursuits.  He  made 
no  more  of  his  old  composed  drawings;  he 
flung  his  pencil  aside.  "  A  few  careful 
studies  of  grass-blades  and  Alpine-rose  bells 
ended  my  Proutism,  and  my  trust  in  draw- 
ing things  out  of  my  head  for  ever."  He 


A  Study  in  Personality         27 

took  up  the  task  of  vindicating  the  hero- 
ism of  art;  and  he  determined  to  show  the 
world  that  the  foundations  of  art  wTere 
sincerity  and  truth. 


Thus  then  at  the  age  of  twenty-three, 
this  young  man,  with  his  mind  as  clear  as 
light,  and  as  full  of  eager  vigour  as  a 
mountain  stream,  sat  down  in  a  light- 
hearted  fashion  to  write  one  of  the  great 
books  of  the  century — great  not  so  much 
for  its  artistic  permanence  of  form  as  for 
its  driving  and  inspiring  force.  He  wrote 
it  in  joy  and  delight,  conscious  of  strength 
and  purity,  and  this  is  written  large  over 
the  page.  He  gave  up  all  idea  of  being  a 
bishop,  and  he  refused  disdainfully  to  enter 
the  sherry  business.  And  what  was  it  that 
he  intended  to  do?  He  meant,  first  of  all, 
in  Modern  Painters,  to  take  a  little  thesis; 
to  prove  at  the  outset  that  Turner  was 
right  in  what  he  saw  and  what  he  drew 
of  nature,  and  that  most  other  painters 


28  Ruskin 

had  been  wrong.  How  little  lie  knew  of 
other  painters  he  was  to  show  before  long; 
but  at  present  his  equipment  was  this:  he 
knew  the  works  of  a  few  English  artists 
well,  such  as  Gainsborough,  Cox,  de  Wint, 
Copley  Fielding,  Prout,  and  Constable.  He 
had  seen,  too,  a  good  many  English  galleries, 
and  he  knew  what  of  older  landscape  artists 
the  patrons  of  art  conspired  to  admire — 
Salvator  Rosa,  Gaspar  Poussin,  Claude, 
and  Hobbema.  And  he  meant  to  dispose 
once  and  for  all,  as  he  says  in  a  fine  in- 
vective, of  "  the  various  Van  somethings 
and  Back  somethings,  more  especially  and 
malignantly  those  who  have  libelled  the  sea." 
All  this  he  intended  to  overthrow  and  set 
right;  and  he  meant,  too,  to  lay  down  a  new 
and  a  comprehensive  philosophy  of  art. 

He  wrote  the  book  at  Herne  Hill  in  the 
early  mornings  and  for  half  the  day;  and 
he  read  it  aloud,  in  simple  childlike  fash- 
ion, to  papa  and  mamma,  and  received  with 
outward  deference  their  admiring  criticisms. 

The   first  principle   that   he   states   and 


A  Study  in  Personality         29 

maintains  is  that  of  Truth  and  Fidelity. 
He  says  that  all  the  evil  of  the  older  land- 
scape art  has  arisen  from  the  painter  en- 
deavouring to  modify  the  works  of  God, 
"  casting' the  shadow  of  himself  on  all  that 
he  sees."  But  if  this  fidelity  were  all,  art 
would  become  a  mere  imitation,  and  the 
photographer  would  be  the  best  artist. 
Ruskin  begins  by  showing  that  you  do  not 
see  all  that  you  think  you  see.  If  you 
see  a  brick  wall  at  a  distance,  you  know 
it  is  a  brick  wall,  and  therefore  in  a  spirit 
of  fidelity  you  set  to  work  to  paint  the 
bricks;  but  you  do  not  actually  see  them. 
What  you  have  really  to  paint  is  the  effect 
which  a  brick  wall  has  on  the  eye  at  a 
distance,  that  effect  that  makes  you  infer 
that  it  is  made  of  bricks,  even  though  you 
cannot  see  them;  and  he  tells  the  story  of 
a  naval  officer  objecting  to  a  picture  by 
Turner  of  a  man-of-war  at  a  distance,  that 
there  were  no  port-holes — the  fact  being 
that  at  a  distance  you  cannot  see  the 
port-holes. 


3O  Ruskin 

But  the  other  side  of  the  thesis  is  that 
the  true  artist  must  select  and  combine, 
but  never  sacrifice  reality.  If  you  set  your- 
self to  paint  all  that  you  see,  you  might 
spend  a  long  lifetime  on  a  single  picture, 
and  leave  it  unfinished  at  the  end.  "  There 
is  ...  more  ideality,"  he  wrote,  "  in  a 
great  artist's  selection  and  treatment  of 
roadside  weeds  and  brook-worn  pebbles, 
than  in  all  the  struggling  caricatures  of 
the  meaner  mind,  which  heaps  its  fore- 
ground with  colossal  columns  and  heaves 
impossible  mountains  into  the  encumbered 
sky." 

But  here  we  are  met  by  a  difficulty  at 
the  outset;  it  begs  the  question  to  say  that 
an  artist  must  not  cast  his  own  shadow 
on  his  works,  if  the  next  moment  it  is 
maintained  that  the  strength  of  the  artist 
lies  in  his  power  of  selection  and  combina- 
tion. The  real  truth  is  that  no  one  exactly 
knows  what  lies  behind  the  pleasure  of  art; 
or  rather  that  it  is  so  complicated  a  pleas- 
ure, and  lies  so  much  in  the  taste  and 


A  Study  in  Personality         31 

power  of  the  recipient,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  lay  down  exact  rules.  What  really  mat- 
ters is  the  quality  of  the  mind  that  selects 
and  interprets,  and  the  charm  which  in- 
vests his  skill.  Art  may  be  intensely  life- 
like without  being  like  life.  What  makes 
the  difference  is  the  personality  of  the 
artist,  the  way  in  which  he  interprets  na^ 
ture,  and  the  emotions  he  can  arouse  by 
his  presentation  of  it. 

What  somewhat  vitiates  the  principles 
enunciated  by  Kuskin  is  that  he  admired 
Turner  so  intensely  that  he  could  not  see 
his  faults — indeed  he  loved  them.  Euskin 
takes  occasion,  for  instance,  to  praise  the 
foregrounds  of  Turner,  the  figures  and  the 
detail.  He  scoffs  at  Claude  for  making 
the  people  in  the  foregrounds  of  his  pic- 
tures principally  occupied  in  carrying  about 
red  trunks  with  locks.  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact  the  figures  in  Turner's  foregrounds 
are  often  grotesque  and  ridiculous,  and  the 
detail  childishly  inaccurate  and  absurd. 
The  glory  of  Turner  is  in  his  vast  sweep 


32  Ruskin 

of  mellow  distances,  indicating,  by  some 
subtle  magic,  forest  and  leafy  hill  and  sun- 
lit glade  and  winding  river;  in  the  incredi- 
ble spaciousness  of  his  air,  the  secret  gold 
of  his  cloud-veiled  suns,  the  prodigal  splen- 
dour of  dawning  or  waning  light.  And 
Turner  by  his  amazing  assiduity  and  un- 
tiring observation,  by  years  of  hourly  labour 
and  by  unerring  fidelity  of  memory,  saw 
and  presented  a  whole  host  of  things  that 
no  artist  seems  ever  before  to  have  dared 
to  see,  much  less  to  paint.  The  perversity 
of  Euskin  lay  not  in  his  praising  Turner, 
but  in  his  discrediting  the  work  of  those 
other  great  artists  each  of  whom,  except 
perhaps  Salvator  Rosa,  who  is  a  merely 
melodramatic  scene-painter,  has  his  own 
charm. 

Turner  left  two  great  pictures  by  his  will 
to  the  National  Gallery,  with  the  condition 
that  they  should  be  hung  side  by  side 
with  two  great  Claudes,  with  the  intention 
that  his  own  work  should  gain  by  juxtaposi- 
tion with  what  was  so  false  and  unreal. 


A  Study  in  Personality         33 

For  a  time,  no  doubt,  the  patient  sheep- 
like  gazer  obediently  saw  all  the  glory  of 
Turner  and  all  the  vileness  of  Claude 
which  Ruskin  bade  him  see.  But  now  any 
one  who  will  look  calmly  at  the  two,  will 
see  that  the  Claudes  have  an  incomparable 
charm  of  their  own.  The  golden  sunlight 
of  a  great  summer  day  falls  with  a  mellow 
richness  on  vale  and  promontory,  where  the 
waves  lap  gently  in  the  haze-hung  bays. 
There  is  a  sense  of  meditative  content 
about  the  whole,  the  happy  weariness  that 
thinks  gratefully  of  the  end  of  labour  and 
the  coming  in  of  the  night.  The  scene  is 
full  of  incommunicable  romance;  the  ruined 
grass-grown  temples,  the  embattled  villas, 
the  dim  figures  of  men  and  women,  all  have 
a  life  of  their  own,  if  one  could  but  pene- 
trate its  secret.  To  deny  the  charm  of 
Claude  is  to  deny  the  sense  of  romance,  the 
power  of  imagination  which  can  build  a 
wistful  dream  of  what  life  could  have  been 
like,  by  disregarding  for  the  moment  the 
harsher  elements,  and  leaving  only  the 


34  Ruskin 

pure  and  beauty-haunted  visions  in  which 
hope  and  memory  are  so  rich,  but  which 
our  human  world,  with  its  strange  admix- 
ture of  pain  and  darkness,  makes  it  so  hard 
to  realise  and  retain.  The  real  fact  was, 
and  it  may  at  once  be  stated,  that  Ruskin 
was  not  largely  endowed  with  imagination. 
He  had  so  clear  a  vision  for  the  precise 
and  definite  forms  of  beauty  which  he  could 
see,  the  world  was  to  him  so  rich  and  vari- 
ous, that  he  did  not  or  could  not  enter  into 
the  promise  of  poetry.  If  this  is  not  clearly 
understood,  one  is  under  an  entire  mis- 
conception, both  of  his  powers  and  his 
limitations.  His  strength  lay  in  his  intense 
perception  of  what  was  there;  but  he  was 
a  moralist  and  not  a  poet;  he  had  little 
sense  of  symbols,  he  had  little  touch  of 
music  in  his  composition.  He  saw  the  light 
on  things  so  clearly  that  he  did  not  see 
the  hidden  light  that  falls  through  things. 
"  I  was  only  interested,"  he  wrote,  "  by 
things  near  me,  or  at  least  clearly  visible 
and  present."  He  paid  a  heavy  penalty 


A  Study  in  Personality         35 

for  this  in  his  days  of  later  darkness;  but 
in  those  early  days,  the  rapture  of  light 
and  colour  and  form  so  filled  his  heart  and 
mind  that  he  did  not  see  those  further 
secrets  which  can  only  be  guessed  at  and 
perceived,  hardly  shared  or  uttered,  but  the 
truth  of  which,  if  a  man  has  once  tasted 
them,  has  a  sacredness  that  is  beyond  all 
words. 

What  further  did  he  set  himself  to  do? 
No  less,  as  I  have  said,  than  to  make  a 
reasoned  philosophy  of  all  art.  And  he 
did  this,  not  in  a  loose  or  vague'  way,  but, 
arguing  like  Aristotle  and  Euclid,  as  co- 
gently and  strictly  as  he  knew  how.  Now 
it  seems  to  me  that  though  here  he  at- 
tempted an  impossibility,  it  was  all  on  the 
right  lines;  it  is  only  by  the  application 
of  the  scientific  method  to  psychological 
things  that  we  can  penetrate  human  psy- 
chology ;  and  though  one  may  not  be  wholly 
convinced  by  Ruskin's  reasoning,  it  is  good 
to  send  one's  mind  to  school  with  him.  He 
sets  out  with  a  large  scheme,  as  Plato,  in 


36  Ruskin 

the  Republic,  set  out  to  analyse  the  na- 
ture of  Justice.  We  end,  perhaps,  when 
we  have  read  the  Republic,  by  knowing 
little  more  about  Justice  than  when  we 
began.  We  feel  like  St.  Augustine,  who 
replied  to  the  pert  question,  "  What  is 
time? " — "  I  know  when  you  do  not  ask 
me."  But  we  have  caught  glimpses  of 
many  beautiful  things  as  we  proceed.  The 
force  of  Ruskin's  work  lies  not  in  the  argu- 
ment, which  is  inconclusive  enough,  but  in 
the  shower  of  stimulating  and  enlightening 
things  he  lets  fall  by  the  way.  These  pages 
of  close  reasoning  are  relieved  at  intervals 
by  passages  of  wonderful  and  luscious 
beauty,  those  great  musical  sentences,  so 
full  of  colour  and  movement,  so  clear  and 
sweet  of  cadence,  which  dapple  the  sun- 
scorched  path  as  with  a  burst  of  shad*e  and 
bloom.  It  was  this  which  gave  the  book 
its  appeal;  and  Ruskin  used  to  complain 
that  the  public  loved  his  pretty  sentences 
and  cared  nothing  for  his  principles.  It 
was  true  enough;  the  sentences  were  amaz- 


A  Study  in  Personality         37 

ingly  beautiful,  the  principles  were  dry  and 
inconclusive. 

Let  me  quote  one  instance,  in  passing,  of 
the  sort  of  admirable  sidelight  he  throws 
upon  art.  He  says  that  the  untrained  mind 
is  unduly  impressed  by  the  first  sketch,  the 
beginnings  of  the  picture.  That  five  chalk 
touches  bring  a  head  to  life,  and  that  no 
other  five  touches  in  the  course  of  the 
sketch  will  ever  do  so  much.  But  he  shows 
clearly  enough  that  the  trained  onlooker 
is  not  thus  misled,  and  that  the  true  ap- 
preciation of  art  lies  in  the  recognition  of 
the  intellectual  and  technical  power  that 
completes  and  develops  the  picture. 

The  first  volume  of  Modern  Painters  was 
published  by  the  father's  advice  anony- 
mously— "  by  a  graduate  of  Oxford."  It 
won  an  instant  recognition.  Tennyson, 
Sydney  Smith,  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  agreed 
that  here  was  a  new  spirit  and  a  new 
voice.  The  world  found  out  the  secret,  and 
laid  hands  on  the  author;  and  Ruskin  be- 
gan to  learn  the  truth  of  the  famous  say- 


38  Ruskin 

ing  which  he  afterwards  uttered,  that  the 
artist  must  fit  himself  in  all  ways  for  the 
best  society,  and  then  must  abjure  it. 

And  then  there  came  a  sudden  revulsion. 
He  went  to  the  Louvre  in  1844,  and  there 
suddenly  burst  upon  him  the  knowledge, 
which  he  had  never  previously  suspected, 
of  the  greatness  of  the  Venetian  school  of 
Italian  painters — Titian,  Veronese,  Bellini. 
He  rushed  to  Italy  in  the  following  year, 
and  began  a  fierce  study  of  mediaeval  art; 
and  he  did  not  merely  look  and  observe 
— he  drew,  day  after  day,  for  eight  or  nine 
hours,  copying  pictures  and  frescoes.  And 
then  all  in  a  moment  he  saw  the  Tinto- 
rettos  at  Venice,  and  the  current  of  his 
future  life  was  altered:  it  was  an  artistic 
conversion.  He  realised,  in  an  instant,  that 
the  art  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  su- 
premely and  undeniably  great,  when,  by  all 
his  ingrained  religious  theories,  it  ought  to 
have  been  base  and  vile.  He  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  straitest  evangelicalism, 
and  sincerely  believed  that  any  art  based 


A  Study  in  Personality         39 

upon  or  springing  from  Catholic  influences 
must  be  inherently  degraded.  It  was  not 
the  realisation  of  Italian  art  generally,  but 
of  the  art  of  the  Renaissance  in  particular, 
which  knocked  his  early  theories  to  pieces. 
We  must  not  too  hastily  blame  him  for 
rashness  and  carelessness.  Nowadays,  with 
all  the  photographs  and  reproductions  of 
great  pictures  which  are  accessible  to  all, 
it  is  possible  for  the  most  sedentary  per- 
son to  form  some  idea  of  the  varied  treas- 
ures of  Italian  art.  But  all  this  was 
non-existent  then ;  indeed  it  is  Ruskin's  in- 
fluence that  is  mainly  responsible  for  the 
change. 

At  Venice  he  took  a  fever,  and  a  time 
of  horrible  depression  followed.  And  now 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  says  he 
had  the  experience  of  intense  and  agonised 
prayer  to  God,  a  prayer  which  was  in- 
stantly answered.  But  this  sense  of  a 
direct  relation  with  God  did  not  last,  and 
he  drifted  away  into  the  "  darkness  of  the 
Underworld." 


4Q  Ruskin 

It  must  be  remembered,  as  I  have  said, 
that  he  had  been  brought  up  in  the 
severest  evangelicalism.  He  had  been  con- 
tinually finding  out  the  limitations  and 
inconsistencies,  and  even  errors,  of  the  old 
grim  creed ;  and  now  he  wrote  pathetically : 
"  It  seemed  to  me  quite  sure  since  my 
downfall  of  heart  .  .  .  that  I  had  no  part 
nor  lot  in  the  privileges  of  the  saints;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  had  such  share  only  in 
the  things  of  God  as  well-conducted  beasts 
and  serenely  minded  birds  had." 

And  then  he  plunged  into  the  second 
volume  of  Modern  Painters,  which  he  said 
was  written  "  at  the  moulting-time  "  of  his 
life,  and  drew  out  the  theory  of  beauty. 
But  it  was  characteristic  of  Ruskin  that 
though  the  revelation  of  Italian  art  had 
knocked  his  former  theory  to  bits,  he  never 
thought  of  abjuring  it,  or  of  reconstructing 
a  new  theory.  He  only  attempted  to  fit 
into  the  old  scheme  the  new  principles, 
with  what  confusion  of  thought  may  be 
seen  in  that  second  volume. 


A  Study  in  Personality         41 

The  book  is  not  easy  reading;  it  is  closely 
and  rigidly  argued,  with  some  mistakes  in 
fact,  but  with  a  marvellous  copiousness  of 
illustration.  He  was  trying,  on  the  Aristo- 
telian method,  in  the  manner  of  Locke, 
and  in  the  style  of  Hooker,  to  argue 
principles  out  of  facts.  His  aim  was  to 
present  a  theory  of  Beauty — perhaps  the 
most  difficult  thing  in  the  world,  be- 
cause it  is  so  impossible  to  see  into  other 
people's  minds  in  such  a  matter,  or  to  know 
what  they  admire  and  why  they  admire  it. 
The  perception  of  beauty  is  all  such  a  sub- 
jective thing,  and  so  bound  up  with  tradi- 
tions and  associations,  that  it  is  next  to 
impossible  to  generalise  at  all  about  it,  be- 
cause half  one's  facts  must  be  drawn  from 
one's  own  experience;  and  who  can  say 
what  inheritance  of  use  and  circumstance 
may  not  dictate  the  limits  of  our  own  taste 
and  distaste?  Take  for  a  simple  instance 
the  ideals  of  Japanese  art.  In  the  case  of 
details  like  flowers  or  leaves,  insects  or 
birds,  it  is  obvious  that  a  Japanese  artist 


42  Ruskin 

is  trying  to  draw  what  he  sees,  and  to 
catch  what  he  thinks  beautiful  in  them. 
But  Japanese  artists  have  inherited  a  tra- 
dition of  representation  which  makes  one 
wonder  if  indeed  they  see  at  all  what  we 
1  see.  The  flatness  of  the  whole  design, 
the  lack  of  depth  and  perspective  and 
shadow,  compel  us  to  recognise  that  they 
are  on  the  look-out  for  a  set  of  qualities 
that  we  do  not  see,  and  unconsciously 
neglecting  a  whole  set  of  qualities  on  which 
to  our  own  mind  the  whole  lifelikeness  of 
a  picture  depends.  The  only  evidence  which 
we  can  quote  in  our  own  favour,  is  that  a 
photograph  seems  nearer  to  an  English 
picture  than  it  is  to  a -Japanese.  The  great 
bare  streaks  and  patches  of  a  Japanese  pic- 
ture, which  make  the  whole  look  like  a 
mosaic  of  suspended  vignettes — the  treat- 
ment of  water,  with  indigo  streaks  and 
spongy  crumpled  foam,  with  no  indication 
of  motion  or  depth  or  continuity;  these 
things  make  us  see  that  there  are  different 
conventions  in  the  art  of  different  nations, 


A  Study  in  Personality         43 

and  that  we  expect  in  a  picture,  not  what 
we  see  in  nature,  but  what  we  have  learnt 
to  expect  on  a  canvas.  But  Ruskin  was 
not  daunted  by  such  considerations ;  he  had 
observed  so  much,  drawn  it  so  faithfully 
and  loved  it  so  intensely,  that  he  was  quite 
ready  to  evolve  a  theory  of  beauty  out  of 
his  own  consciousness.  And  thus  the  book 
is  not  really  a  philosophical  treatise,  but  a 
close  analysis  of  his  own  sensations,  the 
whole  written  with  a  vehemence  and  an  in- 
tellectual passion  that  make  it  at  all  events 
an  extremely  suggestive  document.  The 
theory  is  all  dominated  by  Ruskin's  hitherto 
unshaken  religious  sense.  He  accounts  for 
our  sense  of  beauty  by  referring  it  to  the 
attributes  of  God.  Ruskin  knew  far  more 
about  God  in  those  days  than  he  dared 
to  know  later;  and  the  treatise  really  puts 
art  on  a  moral  basis,  by  referring  it  to 
the  "  heavenward  duty  "  of  mankind.  But 
Ruskin  hated  metaphysics — he  had  been 
saved  by  Dr.  Johnson,  he  once  said,  from 
being  caught  in  the  cobwebs  of  German 


44  Ruskin 

metaphysics,  or  sloughed  in  the  English 
drainage  of  Theism.  And  thus  he  swept 
speculation  aside,  and  laid  down  the  prin- 
ciple that  beauty  is  the  bread  of  the  soul, 
and  that  we  must  advance,  as  we  live  on, 
from  what  is  brilliant  to  what  is  pure.  And 
thus  he  was  led  to  the  conclusion  that  a 
false-hearted  and  impious  man  could  not 
be  a  great  imaginative  painter.  This  judg- 
ment must  be  here  quoted,  because  of  all 
Ruskin's  deliberate  judgments  it  is  perhaps 
the  one  that  has  done  him  most  harm  as  an 
aesthetic  philosopher,  since  it  is  a  judgment 
that  is  directly  opposed  to  facts;  and  it 
is  opposed  to  facts,  because  it  takes  no  ac- 
count whatever  of  the  strange  admixture 
of  good  and  evil  in  so  many  lives,  and 
most  of  all  in  the  lives  of  artists.  A  man 
may  see  what  is  glorious  and  pure,  and 
represent  it,  if  he  has  skill  of  hand  and 
eye;  but  he  may  also  see  what  is  beautiful 
without  being  pure,  and  be  sorrowfully  en- 
slaved by  it :  and  perhaps  some  of  the  finest 
of  all  art  is  born  out  of  that  very  struggle. 


A  Study  in  Personality         45 

What  would  Kuskin  have  made,  if  he  had 
known  it,  of  the  strange  grossness  and 
coarseness  of  fibre  that  lay  beneath  the  life 
of  his  beloved  Turner?  When  he  did  learn 
it,  later  on,  he  found  himself  unable  to 
write  the  life  of  the  artist,  as  he  had  planned 
to  do.  Of  course  neither  lofty  imagination 
nor  technical  skill — which  demands  for  its 
continuous  strength  and  clearness  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  ascetic  and  the  training  of  an 
athlete — can  be  expected  from  a  man  hope- 
lessly abandoned  to  sensuality.  To  achieve 
mastery,  whether  of  thought  or  art,  a  man 
must  be  self-restrained  and  temperate.  We 
have  a  way  of  limiting  our  use  of  the  word 
sin  to  sins  of  the  body;  but  sins  of  the 
mind  and  heart  we  class  with  political  crime 
as  hardly  discreditable  misdemeanours.  And 
indeed  the  gloomy  pride  of  Michelangelo, 
the  acrid  irritability  of  Beethoven,  did  not 
mar  the  spirituality  of  their  art. 

5 

Ten  years  were  to  pass  before  the  vol- 


46  Ruskin 

urnes  III.  and  IV.  of  Modern  Painters  were 
to  see  the  light;  and  they  were  the  years 
of  Buskin's  life  of  which  we  know  the  least. 
The  family  had  moved  to  a  larger  house  on 
Denmark  Hill,  a  big  villa,  with  seven  acres 
of  garden  and  paddock,  with  glass-houses 
and  stables,  fowl-houses  and  piggeries, 
where  the  pigs  spoke  excellent  Irish;  but 
all  this  was  the  natural  enough  consequence 
of  growing  wealth — for  old  Mr.  Ruskin  was 
now  becoming  a  very  rich  man.  Yet  the 
change  gave  but  little  proportionate  pleas- 
ure to  any  of  the  three  that  had  come  from 
the  simpler  delights  of  Herne  Hill.  Ruskin 
himself  passed  through  a  time  of  much  de- 
spondency. And  one  unhappy  episode  can- 
not be  wholly  passed  over,  though  he  never 
said  a  word  of  it  himself  in  his  own 
autobiography.  He  married  in  1848,  half 
thoughtlessly,  half  wilfully,  the  daughter 
of  old  family  friends,  a  girl,  Euphemia 
Gray,  for  whom  some  years  before  he  had 
written  his  charming  allegory,  The  King  of 
the  Golden  River.  It  was  a  marriage  only 


A  Study  in  Personality         47 

in  name.  There  was  little  in  common  be- 
tween the  pair,  Mrs.  Ruskin's  interests 
being  mainly  social  and  personal. 

They  settled  in  London,  and  Ruskin 
wrote  the  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture, 
which  may  be  held  to  have  had  a  stronger 
practical  effect  on  English  architectural  art 
than  any  other  of  his  writings:  it  shook 
conventional  ideas  rudely  and  roughly 
about.  The  Seven  Lamps,  which  he  con- 
fessed he  had  great  difficulty  in  not  mak- 
ing into  eight  or  nine,  are  seven  great  moral 
qualities — Truth,  Beauty,  Power,  Sacrifice, 
Obedience,  Labour,  and  Memory.  The  one 
cardinal  principle  was  that  buildings  ought 
to  look  what  they  are,  and  to  serve  their 
purpose;  that  it  is  an  architect's  business 
to  decorate  construction  and  not  to  con- 
struct decoration.  These  and  other  like 
principles  have  become  so  much  a  matter 
of  course  that  one  is  apt  to  forget  how 
novel  and  how  precise  they  were  at  the 
time,  and  from  what  unmeaning  muddle 
of  false  ideas  they  rescued  us.  The  art 


48  Ruskin 

which  Ruskin  selected  to  praise  as  innately 
beautiful  was  the  art  of  Italian  fourteenth- 
century  Gothic.  I  believe  myself  that  it 
will  be  seen  some  day  that  the  book,  by 
its  force  and  vehemence,  caused  an  artificial 
interruption  or  suspension  of  the  develop- 
ment of  our  native  architecture.  The  novels 
of  Walter  Scott  and  the  Oxford  Movement 
had  cut  sharply  across  the  classical  ideals 
so  nobly  initiated  by  Wren,  but  which  in 
the  distracted  apathy  of  the  eighteenth 
century — its  greedy  materialism,  its  ugly 
indifference  to  the  arts  of  peace — had  be- 
come every  year  more  tame  and  dull.  But 
it  was  an  interruption  for  all  that,  and  the 
mid- Victorian  Gothic  is  a  very  shallow 
ripple  on  the  tide  of  art.  We  seem  to  be 
feeling  our  way  at  present,  through  great 
restlessness  and  wilfulness,  to  a  style  of 
which  classical  art  is  the  ground-work. 
This  might  have  been  done  earlier,  but 
for  Buskin  and  Pugin;  but  English  archi- 
tecture was  indeed  a  valley  of  dry 
bones,  which  needed  a  shaking  and  a  sort- 


A  Study  in  Personality         49 

ing    before    they    could    stand    upon    their 
feet. 

I  will  here  quote  a  description  of  the  life 
lived  at  Denmark  Hill,  written  by  a  strange 
pietistic  artist  called  James  Smetham,  who 
never  fulfilled  the  promise  of  his  youth: 

I  walked  there  [writes  Smetham]  through 
the  wintry  weather,  and  got  in  about  dusk. 
One  or  two  gossiping  details  will  interest  you 
before  I  give  you  what  I  care  for;  and  so 
I  will  tell  you  that  he  has  a  large  house  with 
a  lodge,  and  a  valet  and  footman  and  coach- 
man, and  grand  rooms  glittering  with  pictures, 
chiefly  Turner's,  and  that  his  father  and  mother 
live  with  him,  or  he  with  them.  His  father  is 
a  fine  old  gentleman,  who  has  a  lot  of  bushy 
grey  hair,  and  eyebrows  sticking  up  all  rough 
and  knowing,  with  a  comfortable  way  of  com- 
ing up  to  you  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
and  making  you  comfortable,  and  saying,  in 
answer  to  your  remark,  that  "  John's  "  prose 
works  are  pretty  good.  His  mother  is  a  ruddy, 
dignified,  richly-dressed  old  gentlewoman  of 
seventy-five,  who  knows  Chamonix  better  than 
Camberwell;  evidently  a  good  old  lady,  with 
the  Christian  Treasury  tossing  about  on  the 
table.  She  puts  "  John  "  down,  and  holds  her 


50  Ruskin 

own  opinions,  and  flatly  contradicts  him;  and 
he  receives  all  her  opinions  with  a  soft  rev- 
erence and  gentleness  that  is  pleasant  to 
witness. 

I  wish  I  could  reproduce  a  good  impression 
of  "  John  "  for  you,  to  give  you  the  notion 
of  his  "  perfect  gentleness  and  lowlihood."  He 
certainly  bursts  out  with  a  remark,  and  in  a 
contradictious  way,  but  only  because  he  be- 
lieves it,  with  no  air  of  dogmatism  or  conceit. 
He  is  different  at  home  from  that  which  he 
is  in  a  lecture  before  a  mixed  audience,  and 
there  is  a  spiritual  sweetness  in  the  half-timid 
expression  of  his  eyes;  and  in  bowing  to  you, 
as  in  taking  wine,  with  (if  I  heard  aright) 
"  I  drink  to  thee,"  he  had  a  look  that  has 
followed  me,  a  look  bordering  on  tearful. 

He  spent  some  time  in  this  way.  Un- 
hanging a  Turner  from  the  wall  of  a  dis- 
tant room,  he  brought  it  to  the  table  and  put 
it  in  my  hands;  then  we  talked;  then  he  went 
up  into  his  study  to  fetch  down  some  illus- 
trative print  or  drawing:  in  one  case,  a  literal 
view  which  he  had  travelled  fifty  miles  to  make, 
in  order  to  compare  with  the  picture.  And 
so  he  kept  on  gliding  all  over  the  house,  hang- 
ing and  unhanging,  and  stopping  a  few  minutes 
to  talk. 

But  in  the  life  of  Kuskin  a  catastrophe 


A  Study  in  Personality         51 

was  close  at  hand.  He  himself  was  bored 
and  tired  by  society,  and  his  young  wife 
was  absorbed  in  it.  In  1853  the  pair  went 
to  Scotland,  Millais  came  to  stay  with  them 
and  painted  their  portraits.  The  face  of 
Euphemia  Ruskin  may  be  seen  to  this  day 
in  the  beautiful  and  tender  picture,  the 
Order  of  Release,  where  the  young  bare- 
footed Scotch  Bride,  with  a  tranquil  pride, 
presents  the  document  for  the  freedom  of 
her  husband  to  the  kindly  gaoler.  Not  long 
after,  Mrs.  Ruskin  left  her  home  and  re- 
turned to  her  parents.  A  suit  for  nullity 
was  brought  against  her  husband,  and  was 
not  defended;  and  she  shortly  afterwards 
married  Millais.  The  first  marriage  had 
been  a  mistake  from  beginning  to  end,  and 
was  best  annulled.  Ruskin  returned  to  his 
own  family  circle,  and  devoted  himself  to 
his  work  with  ever-increasing  tenacity  and 
perseverance. 

It  was  during  his  married  life  that  he 
made  his  studies  for  The  Stones  of  Venice, 
six  hundred  quarto  pages  of  notes,  as  he 


52  Ruskin 

tells  us;  and  the  book  was  finished  in  1852. 
It  was  nobly  illustrated  too,  with  engrav- 
ings done  under  his  close  superintendence 
from  his  own  drawings. 

The  theory  of  the  book  was  to  teach  the 
laws  of  constructive  art,  and  the  depend- 
ence of  all  human  work  or  edifice  on  the 
happy  life  of  the  workman.  Here  is  struck 
the  first  note  of  his  later  theories  of  social 
reform.  The  strange  thing  is  that  he  ran 
his  theory  violently  against  all  facts.  The 
Parthenon,  the  Pantheon,  St.  Sophia's,  St. 
Paul's,  which  will  be  admitted  to  be  four 
of  the  finest  buildings  in  the  world,  all 
sprang  from  periods  conspicuous  for  moral 
and  social  corruption,  and  what  is  more, 
from  periods  when  the  workman  was  merci- 
lessly sweated  and  mechanically  coerced; 
they  are  in  fact  the  product  of  the  rankest 
and  most  violent  individualism.  But  here 
again,  though  the  root  idea  was  a  false  one, 
the  book  is  splendidly  suggestive  and  ur- 
gently inspiring.  William  Morris  summed 
up  the  teaching  of  the  book  so  forcibly  and 


A  Study  in  Personality         53 

enthusiastically  that  I  will  quote  his  judg- 
ment here.     He  wrote: 

The  lesson  which  Ruskin  here  teaches  us  is 
that  art  is  the  expression  of  man's  pleasure 
in  labour;  that  it  is  possible  for  man  to 
rejoice  in  his  work,  for,  strange  as  it  may 
seem  to  us  to-day,  there  have  been  times  when 
he  did  rejoice  in  it;  and>  lastly,  that  unless 
man's  work  once  again  becomes  a  pleasure  to 
him,  the  token  of  which  change  will  be  that 
beauty  is  once  again  a  natural  and  necessary 
accompaniment  of  productive  labour,  all  but 
the  worthless  must  toil  in  pain,  and  there- 
fore live  in  pain  ...  if  this  be  true  ...  it 
follows  that  the  hallowing  of  labour  by  art  is 
the  one  aim  for  us  at  the  present  day.  If 
politics  are  to  be  anything  else  than  an  empty 
game,  more  exciting  but  less  innocent  than 
those  which  are  confessedly  games  of  skill  or 
chance,  it  is  towards  this  goal  of  the  happiness 
of  labour  that  they  must  make. 

But  the  strange  thing  is  that  at  the  very 
time  when  Kuskin  was  preaching  that  jus- 
tice, mercy,  and  pure  religion  are  the  soil 
in  which  great  art  flourishes,  that  "  fidelity 
to  the  legible  laws  of  an  undoubted  God  " 


54  Ruskin 

was  the  mainspring  of  art,  his  old  rigid 
Calvinistic  creed  was  collapsing.  He  knew 
nothing  of  history,  and  still  less  of  ecclesi- 
astical history;  nothing  at  all  of  sociology. 
He  found  himself  saying  that  Catholicism 
was  the  most  debasing  and  degrading  of 
all  creeds,  while  he  was  being  forced  to 
uphold  the  fervour  and  sincerity  of  the 
best  Catholic  art.  But  he  acted  character- 
istically enough.  He  saw  the  truth  in  a 
flash.  A  humbler  man  might  perhaps  have 
set  to  work  to  read  history  and  study 
philosophy;  but  this  Ruskin  could  not  do, 
and  we  cannot  desire  that  he  should  have 
done  so.  The  evils  which  he  saw  and  testi- 
fied against  were  there;  the  truths  he  up- 
held were  there:  but  he  had  not  the  least 
idea  of  the  marvellous  interplay  and  com- 
plexity of  social  and  vital  forces;  there 
was  no  middle  ground  for  him.  A  quality, 
an  age,  a  person  was  to  Ruskin  entirely 
and  indisputably  noble,  or  hopelessly  and 
irredeemably  vile.  And  so  without  reflec- 
tion, but  with  indignation  and  vehemence, 


A  Study  in  Personality         55 

he  started  on  a  crusade  against  all  re- 
ligious and  social  and  philosophical  ortho- 
doxies, and  became  a  sorrowful  prophet 
enough;  but  his  sorrow  had  a  fruitful  ap- 
peal which  his  dogmatism  had  never 
possessed. 


n 


I  HAVE  now  traced  the  story  of  the  first 
three  decades  of  Ruskin's  life,  up  to  the 
age  of  thirty  or  thereabouts,  while  he  was 
still  an  art  critic.  I  will  now  attempt  to 
define  briefly  his  relation  to  the  art  of  his 
time;  and  the  point  I  wish  to  make  clear, 
a  point  which  requires  to  be  firmly  stated, 
is  this:  Ruskin  was  never  in  the  technical 
sense  an  art  critic  at  all.  He  wrote  about 
art,  it  is  true,  and  he  wrote  about  it  with 
considerable  technical  knowledge.  He  was 
a  real  artist  himself,  and  he  thus  had  a 
considerable  practical  knowledge  of  the 
aims,  the  difficulties,  the  obstacles,  the 
theory,  and  the  treatment  of  art.  But  to 
be  a  comprehensive  critic  of  art,  and  it  was 
56 


A  Study  in  Personality         57 

this  which  Ruskin  undertook  to  be,  a  man 
must  have  a  comprehensive  view  of  art — 
he  must  be  erudite,  he  must  have  a  know- 
ledge at  once  wide  and  detailed;  and  this 
Euskin  did  not  possess.  His  acquaintance 
with  pictorial  art  was  partial  and  limited. 
He  came  to  the  task  with  furious  pre- 
ferences and  almost  fanatical  preposses- 
sions. He  knew  something  about  the  two 
great  English  schools  of  art — portraiture 
and  landscape.  He  knew  a  very  little  of 
Italian  art,  but,  as  I  have  shown,  there 
were  whole  schools,  such  as  the  Venetian 
and  the  Florentine  schools  which,  when  he 
began  his  work,  were  as  sealed  books  to 
him.  He  was  intolerant  of  Dutch  art,  and 
of  French  and  Spanish  schools  he  knew 
nothing  whatever.  He  did  not  exactly 
claim  omniscience,  but  he  claimed  an  ab- 
solute certainty  and  a  Tightness  of  judg- 
ment which  nothing  but  omniscience  could 
have  justified  him  in  claiming. 

But,  as  I  say,  he  was  not  really  criticis- 
ing and  comparing  and  analysing  art  at 


58  Ruskin 

all.  The  pictures  he  knew  were  but  as 
glowing  brands  which  kindled  his  emotion 
and  his  mind.  His  real  concern  was  the 
philosophy  of  art,  or  rather  the  ethics  of 
art.  Moral  ideas  were  what  he  was  in 
search  of  all  along.  It  may  be  said  roughly 
that  all  idealists  are  really  in  search  of 
one  and  the  same  thing,  though  they  call 
it  by  different  names.  They  are  all  in 
search  of  a  certain  transforming  and  up- 
lifting power,  something  which  may  stand 
up  "  above  the  howling  senses'  ebb  and 
flow,"  some  force  which  may  bring  man- 
kind tranquillity  and  inner  happiness — not 
a  listless  and  indolent  happiness,  but  the 
happiness  which  comes  of  having  an  aim 
and  a  goal,  a  cause  to  fight  for,  a  secret 
to  interpret,  a  message  to  announce,  a 
dream  which  is  to  be  brighter  and  purer 
than  material  dreams,  a  vision  which  is  to 
outlast  life  and  to  help  on  the  regeneration 
of  the  world. 

He  wrote  long  after  of  his  own  qualifica- 
tions as  a  critic  of  art: 


A  Study  in  Personality         59 

If  I  have  powers  fitted  for  this  task  (and 
I  should  not  have  attempted  it  but  in  convic- 
tion that  I  have);  they  are  owing  mainly  to 
this  one  condition  of  my  life,  that,  from  my 
youth  up,  I  have  been  seeking  the  fame  and 
honouring  the  work  of  others — never  my  own. 
I  first  was  driven  into  literature  that  I  might 
defend  the  fame  of  Turner;  since  that  day  I 
have  been  explaining  the  power,  or  proclaim- 
ing the  praise,  of  Tintoret — of  Luini — of 
Carpaccio — of  Botticelli — of  Carlyle;  never 
thinking  for  an  instant  of  myself;  and  sacri- 
ficing what  little  faculty  and  large  pleasure  I 
had  in  painting  either  from  nature  or  noble  art, 
that,  if  possible,  I  might  bring  others  to  see 
what  I  rejoiced  in,  and  understand  what  I 
had  deciphered.  There  has  been  no  heroism  in 
this,  nor  virtue — but  only,  as  far  as  I  am 
myself  concerned,  quaint  ordering  of  Fate;  but 
the  result  is,  that  I  have  at  last  obtained  an 
instinct  of  impartial  and  reverent  judgment, 
which  sternly  fits  me  for  this  final  work,  to 
which,  if  to  anything,  I  was  appointed. 

Ruskin  then  believed  the  secret  of  life 
as  well  as  of  art  to  lie  in  a  sort  of  heavenly 
obedience,  a  triumphant  energy,  a  fiery  con- 
templation. The  reason  why  he  clothed  his 
message  at  first  in  terms  of  art  is  a  mere 


60  Ruskin 

question  of  faculty.  To  Ruskin  the  purest 
delight  of  which  his  spirit  was  capable  came 
through  the  eye,  through  the  mysteries  of 
light  and  colour,  of  form  and  curve — the 
devices  which  make  such  a  man  say  in  a 
rapture  of  spiritual  satisfaction,  "  Yes,  it 
is  like  that ! "  He  had  both  the  eye  for 
effect  and  the  eye  for  detail,  sight  at  once 
extended  and  microscopical.  He  wrote  of 
himself,  "  I  had  a  sensual  faculty  of 
pleasure  in  sight,  as  far  as  I  know  un- 
paralleled." 

But  if  he  had  been  a  musician  he  would 
have  attacked  the  problem  in  precisely  the 
same  way,  only  with  a  different  terminology. 
We  may  be  sure  that  in  music  he  would 
have  had  some  three  or  four  supreme  favour- 
ites; he  would  have  swept  the  rest  aside 
with  one  impartial  gesture.  He  would 
have  asserted  with  impassioned  rhetoric 
that  the  inspiring  musician  was  also  the 
virtuous  man.  If  the  facts  had  been  against 
him,  he  would  have  maintained  that  the 
great  musician,  though  disfigured  by  glar- 


A  Study  in  Personality         61 

ing  faults,  had  still  some  inner  righteous- 
ness of  soul,  while  he  would  have  blackened 
the  record  of  musicians  whose  music  he 
believed  to  be  on  the  wrong  lines! 

It  was  noble  and  enthusiastic  theorising, 
most  of  it,  and  no  deficiency  of  knowledge 
can  detract  from  the  inspiration  of  it.  It 
could  and  it  did  kindle  the  seed  of  flame 
in  many  a  generous  mind;  but  it  was  not 
art  criticism.  No  one  can  be  a  critic  who 
is  deeply  and  obviously  biassed,  who  is  from 
first  to  last  a  partisan.  He  may,  it  is  true, 
reveal  the  special  merit  of  the  artists  whom 
he  admires,  but  he  cannot  arrive  patiently 
at  the  principles  of  art,  because  he  cannot 
really  compare  artists;  he  can  only  eulogise 
or  vilify.  Buskin  was  never  just.  But 
that  mattered  little,  because  justice  is  re- 
quired of  the  philosopher  or  the  statesman, 
not  of  the  poet  and  the  prophet.  And  thus 
it  is  impossible  to  make  a  greater  mistake 
than  to  consider  Buskin  to  have  been  a 
critic  of  art:  he  was  a  prophet  of  art,  a 
rhetorician,  a  moralist,  but  he  was  not 


62  Ruskin 

a  judge  nor  an  arbiter,  and  still  less  a  his- 
torian of  art. 

In  those  first  fifteen  years,  while  his  joy 
was  mainly  in  art,  and  while  he  wished  to 
share  his  joy  with  others,  he  preached  from 
that  one  text.  His  disillusionment  came 
not  with  art  but  with  humanity.  When 
he  found  that  the  ordinary  man  did  not 
care  for  art,  and  could  neither  be  inspired 
nor  scolded  into  regarding  it  seriously,  he 
plunged  into  the  study  of  the  causes  which 
made  men  so  indifferent,  so  brutal,  so 
materialistic:  that  was  the  period  of  his 
political  economy  and  of  his  social  studies. 

And  then  when  he  was  headed  off  again, 
and  found  again  that  he  could  not  reform 
or  regenerate  the  world  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye,  that  men  would  not — he  never  per- 
ceived that  they  could  not — see  what  was 
to  himself  so  evident,  so  glorious,  so  divine, 
then  he  surrendered  himself  to  a  sort  of 
despair;  and  even  that  was  beautiful,  be- 
cause he  never  lost  his  gracious  tenderness, 
his  delicate  irony  of  utterance. 


A  Study  in  Personality         63 

We  must  then  keep  this  in  mind — that 
art  criticism  was  to  Ruskin  not  more  than 
the  habit  and  vesture  of  the  priest,  but 
that  all  the  time  his  hand  was  raised  to 
consecrate  and  to  bless,  and  his  heart  was 
set  upon  the  divine  mystery,  of  which  the 
bread  on  the  gleaming  dish  and  the  wine 
in  the  jewelled  chalice  were  but  the  fair 
and  seemly  symbols. 


There  is  a  theory  of  art  which  is  sedu- 
lously put  forward  nowadays  and  passion- 
ately defended — that  art  alone,  of  all  the 
provinces  of  human  activity,  must  exist  for 
its  own  sake.  The  theory  is  that  it  is  the 
expression  that  matters,  that  it  need  not 
even  be  beauty  of  which  the  artist  is  in 
search :  that  he  must  observe,  must  keep 
his  eye  on  the  object,  and  make  a  sincere 
and  perfect  presentment  of  it,  whatever  the 
object  may  be — a  mental  conception,  an  in- 
tellectual idea,  a  landscape,  a  face,  and  so 


64  Ruskin 

on  down  to  things  mean  and  pitiful  and 
grotesque. 

The  theory  is  to  me  so  meaningless  from 
the  outset  that  I  cannot  perhaps  do  jus- 
tice to  it.  It  may  be  true  of  exact  sciences 
like  mathematics,  philosophy,  history,  where 
the  thing  aimed  at  is  the  disentangling 
of  some  definite  truth,  some  equation  of 
values — which  is  an  altogether  intellectual 
process.  But  when  the  process  is  an  emo- 
tional one,  the  theory  appears  to  me  to  have 
no  meaning.  You  cannot  so  restrict  and 
confine  vital  processes.  Of  course  art  is 
vitiated,  as  everything  else  is  vitiated,  if 
you  are  not  really  pursuing  it  at  all,  but 
something  else.  If  you  write  a  novel,  the 
purport  of  which  is  not  to  present  a  story, 
but  to  further  the  cause  of  Foreign  Mis- 
sions, the  art  of  your  writing  will  be  hurt 
exactly  in  so  far  as  you  allow  your  ulti- 
mate aim  to  modify  the  truth  and  vitality 
of  your  picture.  Art  is  partly  a  question 
of  method  and  form,  partly  of  subject  and 
impulse.  Anything  which  awes  or  inter- 


A  Study  in  Personality         65 

ests  or  charms  or  amuses  the  human  mind 
is  fit  to  be  treated  of  by  art:  religion, 
morals,  sociology,  science — all  alike  can  be 
treated  artistically.  I  will  go  further,  and 
say  that  most  of  the  best  literary  art  of 
the  nineteenth  century  in  England  consists 
in  the  treatment  of  moral  ideas — Words- 
worth, Browning,  Tennyson,  Carlyle,  Bus- 
kin, all  were  moralists.  In  fact  Ruskin  by 
himself  seems  to  me,  once  and  for  all,  to  dis- 
pose of  the  theory  of  art  for  art's  sake.  He 
began  by  treating  mainly  of  art,  and  while 
he  did  so,  his  handling  of  it  was  artistic 
enough;  but  when  moral  ideas  took  pos- 
session of  and  dominated  his  mind,  so  far 
from  his  art  being  vitiated  by  the  inrush 
of  this  stronger  tide,  it  grew  in  delicacy 
and  perfection  every  year;  and  what  is  yet 
more  surprising,  when  he  took  to  writing 
Fors  Clavigcra,  and  threw  overboard  all 
consideration  of  form,  the  thing  became 
more  beautiful  still,  so  that  he  reached  the 
perfection  of  his  art  by  preoccupation  with 
moral  ideas,  and  deliberate  neglect  of  form. 

5 


66  Ruskin 

That  is  the  worst,  and  in  'another  way  the 
best,  of  these  dominant  geniuses,  that  they 
knock  to  bits  all  pedantic  theories  of  art, 
and  force  dogmatists  to  reconstruct  their 
principles.  And  thus  they  tend  to  show 
that  art  is  really  a  question  of  inspiration 
and  instinct,  and  not  a  question  of  rules 
and  precedents.  The  vital  thing  is  to  have 
something  to  say,  and  the  next  thing  is  to 
be  able  to  say  it  cogently,  persuasively, 
clearly,  and  beautifully:  and  in  Buskin's 
case,  as  in  the  case  of  others,  the  art  of 
expression  gained,  the  less  he  studied  it. 
Of  course  his  practice  told,  but  what  really 
gave  his  words  force  and  charm  was  the 
intense  desire  to  convince  and  to  persuade 
that  lay  behind  it  all. 

The  opposite  result  is  well  illustrated  by 
the  case  of  Tennyson.  When  in  early  days 
Tennyson  said  what  was  in  his  mind  as  sin- 
cerely and  as  beautifully  as  possible,  his  art 
was  at  its  strongest,  but  when  he  began  to 
try  to  express  what  he  did  not  really  care 
about,  but  what  he  thought  would  be  ap- 


A  Study  in  Personality         67 

proved  of  by  the  public — what  was  expected 
of  him,  what  he  ought  to  care  about — he  be- 
came popular  and  inartistic.  Now,  Euskin 
became  popular  in  spite  of  himself.  He 
thought  that  the  aims,  the  hopes,  the  pleas- 
ures, the  ideals  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lived,  were  not  only  low  but  becoming  lower. 
He  protested,  he  vituperated,  he  broke  out 
into  irony  and  expostulation ;  where  he  went 
wrong  was  when  he  dogmatised  about  the 
limits  of  what  was  beautiful  and  desirable; 
when  he  scolded  people  for  caring  about 
the  art  for  which  he  himself  did  not  happen 
to  care,  or  held  up  as  models  of  unimpeach- 
able beauty  the  slight  and  trivial  books 
and  pictures  in  which  he  detected  a  con- 
genial motive.  But  his  influence  was  due 
partly  to  the  fact  that  he  did  care  vehe- 
mently and  passionately  for  certain  forms 
of  expression  and  certain  ideals  of  life,  and 
partly  too  to  the  fact  that  he  could  invest 
what  lie  said  with  the  indescribable  quality 
called  charm,  which  has  as  yet  escaped  the 
severest  critical  analysis. 


68  Ruskin 

But  the  mistake  which  men  make  who 
uphold  art  for  art's  sake,  is  the  mistake 
which  is  made  by  those  who  think  that 
good  manners  can  be  cultivated  apart  from 
the  unselfishness  and  the  sympathy  of  which 
they  are  the  natural  expression,  or  by  the 
ecclesiastical  persons  who  believe  that  re- 
ligion is  wholly  bound  up  with  ceremonies. 
Art  is  nothing  but  the  love  of  beauty  find- 
ing utterance.  Like  water,  it  will  flow  in 
natural  channels;  its  rules  are  not  arbitrary 
regulations,  but  the  self-created  form  of  its 
owrn  secret  laws;  and  to  confine  it  under 
the  sway  of  precedents  is  as  though  a 
botanist  were  to  condemn  an  unknown 
flower  because  it  violated  the  principles  de- 
duced from  the  flowers  he  knows.  The  only 
fruitful  kind  of  criticism  is  that  which 
recognises  and  welcomes  a  new  force  in 
art,  a  new  form  of  expression,  not  the  criti- 
cism which  lays  down  a  precise  and  inelastic 
code.  In  all  provinces  of  life  which  deal 
with  vital  and  progressive  emotions,  the 
only  people  who  are  certainly  wrong  are 


A  Study  in  Personality         69 

the  orthodox,  because  the  orthodox  are 
those  who  think  that  development  has 
ceased,  and  that  the  results  can  be  tabu- 
lated. And  thus  they  resent  any  further 
development,  because  it  interferes  with  their 
conclusions,  and  gives  them  a  sense  of  in- 
security and  untidiness,  and  the  upsetting 
of  agreeable  arrangements.  In  his  artistic 
criticism  Ruskin  began  by  being  unortho- 
dox, and  in  breaking,  like  Mahomet,  the 
idols  of  the  land.  But  he  ended  by  creat- 
ing his  own  orthodoxy,  and  arriving  at  a 
sort  of  Papal  infallibility,  which  was  per- 
fectly rigid  and  entirely  impenetrable.  Yet 
he  never  made  the  mistake  of  regarding  art 
as  an  end  in  itself.  As  his  outlook  wid- 
ened, he  began  to  regard  the  due  accept- 
ance of  his  own  preferences  in  art  as  a 
sign  and  symptom  of  moral  healthiness,  and 
any  deviation  from  that  loyalty  seemed  to 
him  an  offence  not  against  taste  but  against 
morals.  In  his  views  upon  art  and  life  he 
was  really  intensely  denominational.  He 
was  the  master  of  a  sheepfold,  and  all  out- 


70  Ruskin 

side  were  thieves  and  robbers.  He  required 
absolute  obedience,  but  he  had  not  that  note 
of  personal  dominance  which  distinguishes 
the  founder  of  a  school.  The  real  way  to 
read  and  to  follow  Ruskin  is  to  share  his 
generous  enthusiasms,  and  frankly  to  dis- 
regard his  personal  dictation.  He  is  a 
great  guide  but  an  unsafe  ruler.  One  may 
thankfully  start  on  pilgrimage  with  him, 
but  one  must  be  prepared  to  part  company 
with  him  where  the  roads  divide  over  the 
hill. 


And  now  there  followed  a  very  full  and 
vigorous  period  of  ten  years,  from  1851  to 
1860.  Ruskin  began  his  crusade  with  a 
curious  little  volume:  Notes  on  the  Con- 
struction of  Sheepfolds.  It  is  said  that  a 
good  many  copies  of  this  pamphlet  were 
bought  by  Yorkshire  and  Cumberland  farm- 
ers, under  the  impression  that  it  was  an 
essay  in  technical  agriculture,  and  that  they 
were  vexed  to  find  it  an  appeal  for  Christ- 


A  Study  in  Personality         71 

ian  unity.  It  was  a  plea  to  Anglicanism 
to  abandon  Catholic  pretensions,  and  to 
Presbyterianism  to  adopt  Episcopalianism. 
Of  course  most  religious  men  have  been 
appalled,  at  one  time  or  another,  to  find 
Christians  more  divided  from  each  other 
than  from  the  heathen  by  intense  convic- 
tion and  violent  indignation  over  points  the 
significance  of  which  would  be  almost  un- 
intelligible, by  reason  of  their  similarity,  to 
a  convinced  Buddhist.  Of  course  com- 
promise seems  easy  and  reasonable  enough, 
but  reason  is  a  very  secondary  force  com- 
pared with  consistency  and  tradition.  And 
Ruskin  was  distressed  to  find  how  firmly 
the  adders  of  artistic  orthodoxy  stopped 
their  ears  against  the  voice  of  the  wisest 
of  charmers. 

In  these  years  he  went  much  into  society 
and  made  many  of  his  best  friendships.  He 
took  up  the  cause  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites, 
Rossetti,  Holman  Hunt,  Burne-Jones,  and 
Millais,  and  invested  that  singular  revolt 
with  an  interest  which  it  has  never  lost. 


72  Ruskin 

Buskin's  relations  with  Rossetti  are  ex- 
tremely interesting,  for  this  reason.  Ros- 
setti was  certainly  one  of  the  strongest 
personalities  in  the  region  of  art  that  the 
last  century  produced.  He  was  an  absolute 
pagan,  and  an  almost  inconceivable  indi- 
vidualist. He  took  not  the  slightest  inter- 
est in  history  or  philosophy  or  movements 
of  any  kind.  He  once  divided  the  human 
race  into  two  classes :  artists,  and  the  people 
whose  duty  it  was  to  admire  art  and  to 
pay  for  its  production.  But  he  had  a  mag- 
netic force  and  a  royal  generosity  of  spirit, 
that  made  him  one  of  the  most  dominant 
personalities  of  the  world  of  art.  The  ac- 
quaintance began  with  sympathy  and  de- 
ference. Ruskin  exhorted  Rossetti  to  work, 
bought  his  pictures,  petted  him,  lectured 
him,  criticised  him.  But  it  was  an  impos- 
sible alliance.  Rossetti  was  indifferent  to 
the  claims  of  morality,  and  inflamed  by  the 
holy  fire  of  art.  The  inevitable  rupture 
followed.  Ruskin  found  himself  calmly 
disregarded,  and  Rossetti  went  on  his  own 


A  Study  in  Personality         73 

dark  way  into  sorrow  and  silence.  Each 
descended  into  hell;  but  Ruskin's  inferno 
led  him  out  into  a  clearer  air,  while  the 
torture-chamber  of  Rossetti  was  the  grim 
cul-de-sac  from  which  the  soul  must  some- 
how or  other  retrace  her  burdened  steps  in 
anguish.  But  for  a  time  they  worked  in 
concert,  till  the  gulf  opened  beneath  their 
feet.  Here  is  one  of  Ruskin's  letters  to 
Rossetti,  which  gives  so  curious  an  account  * 
of  his  own  disposition,  as  it  appeared  to 
himself,  and  in  so  intimate  a  strain,  that 
it  is  worth  considering: 

You  constantly  hear  a  great  many  people 
saying  I  am  very  bad,  and  perhaps  you  have 
been  yourself  disposed  lately  to  think  me  very 
good — T  am  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  I 
am  very  self-indulgent,  very  proud,  very  ob- 
stinate, and  very  resentful;  on  the  other  side, 
I  am  very  upright — nearly  as  just  as  I  sup- 
pose it  is  possible  for  man  to  be  in  this  world 
— exceedingly  fond  of  making  people  happy, 
and  devotedly  reverent  to  all  true  mental  or 
moral  power.  I  never  betrayed  a  trust — never 
wilfully  did  an  unkind  thing — and  never,  in 
little  or  large  matters,  depreciated  another 


74  Ruskin 

that  I  might  raise  myself.  I  believe  I  once 
had  affections  as  warm  as  most  people;  but 
partly  from  evil  chance,  and  partly  from  fool- 
ish misplacing  of  them,  they  have  got  tumbled 
down  and  broken  to  pieces.  ...  I  have  no 
friendships  and  no  loves.  .  .  .  My  pleasures 
are  in  seeing,  thinking,  reading,  and  making 
people  happy  (if  I  can  consistently  with  my 
own  comfort).  And  I  take  these  pleasures. 

And  at  this  time  too  began  for  Ruskin 
the  career  as  a  lecturer,  which  was  perhaps 
to  bring  him  closer  to  the  hearts  of  men 
even  than  his  great  books.  It  is  character- 
istic to  note  the  view  which  the  secluded 
household  at  Denmark  Hill  took  of  the 
occupation.  His  father  sorrowfully  per- 
mitted the  venture — the  son  invariably  had 
his  own  way — but  said  that  it  was  degrad- 
ing for  a  man  to  expose  himself  to  journal- 
istic comment  and  personal  references.  The 
mother,  more  lost  in  privacy,  said  grimly 
that  he  was  too  young,  though  lie  was  a 
married  man  of  thirty-four.  "  I  cannot 
reconcile  myself,"  she  wrote,  "  to  the 
thought  of  your  bringing  yourself  person- 


A  Study  in  Personality         75 

ally  before  the  world  till  you  are  somewhat 
older  and  stronger." 

In  1853  Kuskin  was  at  work  writing 
notes  for  the  Arundel  Society  on  Giotto's 
frescoes  at  Padua.  This  little  book,  since 
reprinted,  has  a  special  charm,  because 
Giotto  was  one  of  Kuskin's  particular 
heroes.  He  constantly  returns  to  Giotto, 
and  Giotto  is  one  of  the  few  artists  whom 
he  criticised,  against  whom  he  was  never 
betrayed  into  saying  a  single  disparaging 
word.  It  was  to  him  that  Buskin  traced 
the  guiding  and  originating  principle  of 
Florentine  art.  Giotto's  life  was  romantic, 
even  legendary,  but  there  is  something  of 
the  inner  spirit  of  beauty  in  all  that  came 
from  his  hand.  Moreover  there  is  a  strong 
and  impressive  intellectual  quality  in  all 
that  he  did — the  same  sort  of  quality  which 
comes  out  in  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Michel- 
angelo. One  feels  in  all  Giotto's  work  the 
pressure  of  a  vigorous  mind,  the  presence 
of  the  fundamental  brain-work,  which  Ros- 
setti  held  to  be  the  essence  of  the  finest 


76  Ruskin 

art;  he  never  falls  into  sentimentality  or 
into  monotony.  There  is  something  fresh 
and  unexhausted  about  him,  both  in  his 
choice  of  subjects,  his  handling  of  detail, 
and  his  power  of  contrast.  All  this  was 
deeply  congenial  to  Kuskin;  and  we  must 
not  forget  this  episode  of  his  life,  because 
here  his  power  of  detecting  serene  greatness 
in  art,  and  presenting  it  faithfully  and 
impartially,  without  bitterness  and  undue 
depreciation,  comes  out  most  strongly. 

At  this  time  too,  in  1854,  was  inaugurated 
the  Working  Men's  College,  the  theory  of 
wrhich  was  to  bring  the  serener  sort  of 
academic  culture  within  reach  of  working 
men.  But  this  was  all  part  of  the  great 
Chartist  movement,  which  Charles  Kings- 
ley,  F.  D.  Maurice,  Tom  Hughes,  and 
Carlyle  did  so  much  to  welcome,  and  to 
guide  into  peaceful  channels.  Kuskin 
joined  the  Pre-Kaphaelites  in  the  inception 
of  the  idea;  he  subscribed  largely,  he  lec- 
tured, he  taught  drawing,  and  for  four 
years  he  was  perhaps  the  chief  inspiring 


A  Study  in  Personality         77 

force  of  the  College.  His  reasons  for  sever- 
ing his  connection  with  the  work  were  given 
some  years  later  in  a  letter  to  Maurice. 

It  is  not  [he  wrote]  from  any  failure  in 
my  interest  in  this  class  that  I  have  ceased 
from  personal  attendance.  But  I  ascertained 
beyond  all  question  that  the  faculty  which 
my  own  method  of  teaching  chiefly  regarded, 
was  necessarily  absent  in  men  trained  to  me- 
chanical toil,  that  my  words  and  thoughts 
respecting  beautiful  things  were  unintelligible 
when  the  eye  had  been  accustomed  to  the 
frightfulness  of  modern  city  life. 

The  episode  is  interesting,  as  denoting 
his  change  of  front  and  his  broadening  of 
horizon.  Till  now  he  had  been  rather  a 
brilliant  individualist  than  anything  else. 
But  he  began  to  turn  in  the  direction  of 
social  reform;  he  began  to  see  that  the 
hope  of  the  future  lay  in  the  education 
of  the  democracy.  The  problem  of  the  di- 
vergence of  class  interests  and  class  feel- 
ings began  to  concern  him;  and  he  saw  that 
what  was  needed  was  that  the  wealthier 
class,  who  had  hitherto  possessed  a  sort  of 


78  Ruskin 

monopoly  of  culture,  should  come  forward 
personally,  and  give  freely  whatever  of 
taste  and  beauty  and  inspiring  motive  they 
possessed;  not  in  a  condescending  and 
patronising  spirit,  doling  out  attractive 
selections  of  cheap  culture,  but  sharing 
generously  and  freely  the  good  things 
which  society  had  hitherto  conspired  to  se- 
cure only  to  the  rich  and  leisured  classes. 
Kuskin  began  to  perceive  that  the  fortune 
which  his  father  secured  him  was  in  the 
main  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  sub- 
scription levied  from  the  labours  of  those 
through  whose  uncheered  toil  the  fortune 
was  made. 

F.  D.  Maurice,  for  all  his  deep  conscien- 
tiousness and  generosity  of  purpose,  was 
not  an  ideal  head  for  such  a  movement; 
he  was  an  essentially  puzzle-headed  man. 
Ruskin  said  of  him  that  he  reconciled 
Biblical  difficulties  by  turning  them  up- 
side down,  like  railway  cushions.  He  ar- 
rived at  orthodoxy,  not  by  the  direct  road, 
but  by  labyrinthine  paradoxes.  On  one 


A  Study  in  Personality         79 

occasion  Maurice,  who  was  a  strict  Sabba- 
tarian, was  asked  what  be  felt  about  tbe 
opening  of  museums  on  Sunday.  It  was 
thought  that  he  was  cornered  for  once,  and 
would  have  to  give  a  plain  answer.  But 
Maurice  was  equal  to  the  dilemma.  He 
said  that  museums  should  certainly  be 
opened  on  Sundays,  but  he  trusted  that 
working  men  would  have  too  much  respect 
for  the  Sabbath  to  think  of  frequenting 
them! 

All  this  time  Ruskin  was  throwing  off 
books  with  marvellous  celerity.  Indeed  the 
incredible  amount  of  finished  literary  work, 
which  he  combined  wTith  indefatigable  draw- 
ing, mineralogical  study,  teaching,  and 
lecturing,  shows  the  wonderful  vitality 
which  was  half  the  secret  of  his  force.  He 
recuperated  from  one  sort  of  toil  by  an- 
other; and  I  would  not  have  you  overlook 
the  gigantic  industry  of  the  man !  His 
work  seems  and  was  so  facile,  that  one  is 
apt  to  forget  in  what  urgency  of  stress  it 
was  done. 


8o  Ruskin 

The  Elements  of  Drawing — a  master- 
piece of  clear  statement  and  logical  ex- 
pression— belongs  to  this  date;  and  also 
The  Harbours  of  England,  which  is  a  pa- 
triotic prose  poem  of  the  loftiest  and  most 
resounding  eloquence.  He  began,  too,  his 
annual  Notes  on  the  Academy  Exhibition, 
and  he  was  hard  at  work  arranging  and 
selecting  the  mass  of  Turner's  studies  and 
drawings  which  had  been  left  to  the  nation. 
There  were  nearly  20,000  of  these,  rolled 
up  into  great  cylinders,  rammed  into 
drawers,  stuffed  into  bulging  portfolios, 
many  of  them  drawn  on  both  sides  of  the 
paper;  and  the  whole  damp,  dusty,  and 
neglected.  All  the  time,  too,  he  was  at 
work  on  the  last  volume  of  Modern 
Painters,  of  which  the  final  fifth  volume 
appeared  in  1860. 

The  work  of  one  of  these  years  is  well 
summarised  in  a  letter  written  to  Mrs. 
Carlyle  in  the  autumn  of  1855,  which 
conveys  a  singularly  vivid  picture  of  the 
restless  brain  with  all  its  schemes  and  ideas. 


A  Study  in  Personality         81 

He  begins  by  saying  that  he  has  written 
some  six  hundred  pages  since  the  spring, 
and  that  he  has  great  hopes  of  disturbing 
the  public  peace  in  various  directions  by 
what  he  has  to  suggest.  He  has  also  pre- 
pared, he  says,  thirty  drawings  for  the 
engravers,  some  of  which  he  has  himself 
etched,  and  all  of  which  he  has  retouched, 
He  has  been  reading  up  various  subjects, 
such  as  German  Metaphysics,  Political 
Economy,  Cookery,  Music,  Geology,  Dress, 
Horticulture,  and  Education.  He  has  been 
sketching  in  the  open  air,  designing  a  win- 
dow, learning  Spanish.  He  has  drawn  up 
a  new  system  of  Botany,  on  his  own  lines, 
and  re-arranged  his  collection  of  Minerals. 
But  perhaps  the  main  interest  of  the  letter 
is  his  confession  that  he  has  discovered 
that  all  previous  theories  of  Political 
Economy  are  wrong,  and  that  he  is  engaged 
in  an  independent  investigation  of  the 
nature  of  Wealth. 

The  letter  shows  clearly  enough  the  drift 
of  Ruskin's  mind  in  the  direction  of  social 

6 


82  Ruskin 

problems;  but  it  is  mainly  interesting  as 
illustrating  the  perilous  activity  of  his 
brain.  No  doubt  the  fact  that  he  varied 
his  studies,  and  interspersed  a  good  deal 
of  mechanical  handiwork,  relieved  the  strain 
to  a  certain  extent;  but  it  is  a  revelation 
of  great  restlessness,  and  of  a  furious  appe- 
tite for  mental  occupation,  which  presages 
disaster. 

Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  people  in 
the  world  who  work  hard,  and  work  con- 
tinuously; mechanical  labour,  either  of 
brain  or  hand,  undoubtedly  makes  for 
health  and  sanity;  but  the  danger  with 
Kuskin  was  the  emotional  strain  involved. 
He  could  not  keep  his  thoughts  to  him- 
self, and  be  content  to  accumulate  his 
studies  quietly  and  stolidly.  He  was  forced 
to  share  his  opinions,  and  to  confute  re- 
ceived theories;  and  it  was  here  that  the 
difficulty  lay.  He  was  always  occupied  in 
a  sort  of  mental  strategy,  conducting  a 
campaign  against  complacent  orthodoxy. 
His  persuasive  charm  carried  his  own  cir- 


A  Study  in  Personality         83 

cle  to  a  great  extent  along  with  him;  but 
he  formed  his  own  theories  hastily,  and 
expressed  them  strongly;  and  though  it  is 
perhaps  safe  to  say  that  all  stereotyped 
opinion  is  erroneous,  because  it  is  essential 
to  the  life  of  ideas  that  they  should  grow 
and  develop,  yet  the  expansion  of  thought 
needs  a  combination  of  patience  and  exact- 
ness, which  Ruskin  seldom  attained;  and 
the  battle,  in  a  sense,  cost  him  his  life. 


And  here  I  may  say  a  few  words  about 
the  later  volumes  of  Modern  Painters. 
They  did  little  more  than  expand  and  re- 
iterate the  principles  originally  laid  down. 
The  third  volume  is  really  a  collection  of 
scattered  essays  on  art.  It  begins  with  an 
essay  on  the  Grand  style,  or  Dignity  in 
art,  in  which,  with  infinite  variety  of  illus- 
tration, the  somewhat  indisputable  proposi- 
tion is  stated  that  you  can  tell  greatness 
of  style  by  the  greatness  of  an  artist; 
and  if  you  want  to  go  further  and  detect 


84  Ruskin 

the  greatness  of  an  artist,  the  only  way 
to  arrive  at  it  is  through  the  greatness  of 
his  style.  There  is  a  delightful  chapter  on 
the  Grotesque  in  Art,  and  a  famous  chap- 
ter on  the  Pathetic  Fallacy,  the  point  being 
that  we  are  apt  to  put  human  emotion  be- 
hind natural  forces — to  think  of  the  storm 
as  angry,  of  the  sea  as  cruel,  of  the  sun- 
light as  beneficent,  and  of  the  pestilence 
as  malignant.  Whereas  the  truth  is  that 
even  the  pestilence  has  no  malicious  intent. 
It  is  merely  so  many  colonies  of  vigorous 
bacteria  hard  at  work  enjoying  themselves 
in  congenial  circumstances.  The  result  is 
the  decimation  of  human  society,  and  the 
discomfort  of  many  individuals;  but  the 
bacteria  in  question  are  thinking,  if  they 
reflect  at  all,  about  their  own  eugenics  and 
their  own  social  development,  and  not  the 
least  about  the  bereavements  they  unin- 
tentionally cause.  There  is  too  a  good  deal 
of  dogmatism  about  poetry,  which  is  little 
more  than  a  justification  of  Ruskin's  own 
preferences,  and  shows  that  he  had  but  an 


A  Study  in  Personality         85 

imperfect  appreciation  of  his  subject;  and 
there  is  much  beautiful  writing  about  the 
spirit  of  domestic  landscape,  tamed  wood- 
land, and  tilled  field,  and  a  wild  plea  to 
the  nation  not  to  annihilate  time  and  space 
by  steam. 

And  here  I  would  draw  attention  to  a 
particular  limitation  of  Ruskin's,  because 
it  is  strongly  characteristic  of  him.  He 
spent  himself  at  intervals  in  frantic  ob- 
jurgations of  steam  as  abbreviating  lei- 
surely travel,  and  as  nullifying  dignified 
and  tranquil  manual  labour.  The  fact  is 
that  here  came  out  both  his  bourgeois 
tradition  and  his  innate  Toryism.  The  post- 
chaise  and  the  travelling  carriage  repre- 
sented to  Ruskin  the  height  of  locomotive 
convenience;  but  it  is  impossible  to  resist 
the  conviction,  that  had  he  lived  before 
horses  had  been  used  for  purposes  of  loco- 
motion, he  would  have  passionately  resisted 
their  introduction,  as  interfering  with  the 
natural  dignity  and  appropriateness  of 
pedestrian  ism.  Similarly  had  he  been 


86  Ruskin 

brought  up  to  gain  his  early  experiences 
of  travel  by  railways,  he  would  have  copi- 
ously praised  railway  travelling  as  the  nat- 
ural and  seemly  method  of  voyaging,  and 
would  have  spent  himself  in  bitter  dia- 
tribes against  the  impiety  and  horror  of 
aerial  navigation. 

So  too  with  his  hatred  of  steam  as  a 
mechanical  force.  He  praised  the  human 
use  of  wind  and  water;  he  wanted  to  do 
the  work  of  the  world  by  tide-mills;  the 
waterwheel  and  the  windmill  seemed  to  him 
to  be  comely  and  homely  additions  to  the 
landscape.  But  it  is  wholly  unreasonable 
to  dictate  at  what  point  human  invention 
is  to  cease.  The  telephone  is  not  more 
morally  hateful  and  repugnant  to  the  sense 
of  dignity  than  the  penny  post;  and  to  be 
consistent,  Ruskin  should  have  insisted 
upon  the  disuse  of  all  mechanical  contriv- 
ances for  shortening  labour ;  he  should  have 
implored  men  to  bite  and  tear  cloth  in- 
stead of  using  scissors,  and  to  till  the  earth 
with  their  hands  instead  of  using  spade 


A  Study  in  Personality         87 

and  plough.  He  did  not  see  that  the  one 
chance  of  giving  men  leisure  in  an  over- 
populated  community  is  to  save  mechanical 
and  disheartening  labour  by  every  possible 
means;  and  instead  of  raving  against  manu- 
facturers for  filling  the  air  with  sulphurous 
fumes  and  the  earth  with  cinder-heaps,  he 
should  have  had  the  faith  to  see  that  all 
tlie  turning  of  the  forces  of  the  earth  to 
serve  human  life  and  security  is  a  step  in 
the  direction  of  giving  men  time  to  cultivate 
higher  pleasures  and  to  follow  finer  pur- 
suits. It  is  here  that  a  certain  childish 
petulance,  amusing  enough  if  it  were  not 
also  so  irritating,  comes  out  in  the  man. 

The  fourth  volume  of  Modern  Painters 
carries  on  the  thought  of  the  pictorial 
vision,  of  the  right  use  of  Mystery.  Here 
Buskin's  love  of  strong  paradox  emerges; 
together  with  his  insistence  on  exactness 
of  detail,  comes  such  a  statement  as  this: 
"  All  distinct  drawing  must  be  bad  draw- 
ing, and  .  .  .  nothing  can  be  right  till  it 
is  unintelligible."  "  Excellence  of  the  high- 


88  Ruskin 

est  kind,  without  obscurity,  cannot  exist " ; 
but  this  is  qualified  by  the  celebrated 
phrase,  "  the  right  of  being  obscure  is  not 
one  to  be  lightly  claimed."  It  may  be 
asked  what  coherent  theory  of  art  can  be 
deduced  from  these  contradictions?  The 
answer  is  that  they  are  all  true  statements ; 
and  the  mistake  lay  not  in  the  statements, 
but  in  the  fact  that  Ruskin  began  by 
dogmatising,  and  that  his  view  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  art  widened,  through  simple 
experience,  as  he  wrote.  A  less  positive 
man,  a  man  less  determined  to  teach  and 
to  uphold  a  theory,  might  have  abandoned 
the  task  in  despair,  on  finding  that  a  larger 
experience  of  art  made  havoc  of  earlier 
theories.  But  Buskin  did  not  do  this;  he 
merely  enunciated  his  later  discoveries  just 
as  decisively  as  he  had  announced  his  pre- 
vious discoveries,  heedless,  and  rightly 
heedless,  that  the  new  patch  tore  the  old 
garment  to  tatters.  But  the  new  dicta  en- 
larged the  old.  What  broke  in  pieces  was 
the  old  exclusive  theory.  But  the  only  peo- 


A  Study  in  Personality         89 

pie  who  are  the  worse  for  that  are  those 
who  go  to  Buskin  for  a  scientific  statement 
of  the  ultimate  principles  of  art.  His 
statement  is  throughout  poetical  and  rhe- 
torical, suggestive  rather  than  exhaustive; 
and  while  Buskin  did  not  attain  to  any 
explanation  or  synthesis  of  art,  he  did  con- 
trive to  present  a  splendid  analysis  of  it, 
and  disentangled  much  that  was  pro- 
foundly interesting  and  true  about  the 
motives  of  art  and  its  sources  of  inspiration. 

The  rest  of  the  volume  is  mostly  taken 
up  with  the  subject  of  Mountains  in  art, 
and  is  a  direct  study  of  nature;  and  here 
again  he  tried  to  probe  too  deeply,  and 
attempted  to  attribute  to  the  effects  of 
natural  scenery  the  dispositions  and  emo- 
tions of  those  who  inhabit  mountainous 
country,  the  causes  of  which  lie  far  deeper 
than  the  mere  slope  of  ledge  and  ridge,  the 
sweep  of  mist,  and  the  noise  of  falling 
streams. 

The  fifth  volume  is  a  further  study  of 
landscape,  treating  of  tree  and  leaf,  of 


90  Ruskin 

cloud  and  sea,  and  ends  with  a  fine  sum- 
mary of  the  aims  and  executions  of  great 
landscape  schools;  and  here  we  may  note 
the  singular  and  almost  pettish  exclusion 
of  the  noble  school  of  modern  French  land- 
scape painters,  such  as  Corot  and  Millet, 
which  he  names  with  bated  breath,  and 
with  a  sort  of  shuddering  horror.  The 
cause,  we  may  safely  affirm,  was  that  he 
knew  nothing  of  these  painters,  and  had  not 
studied  them.  The  book  returns  to  a  great 
panegyric  upon  Turner,  and  a  burst  of 
passionate  grief  that  he  was  so  little 
appreciated  and  understood  in  his  lifetime. 
And  so  the  great  book  draws  to  an  end; 
and  surveying  it  all  as  we  can  do,  after 
an  interval  of  fifty  years,  we  can  see  that, 
though  it  fails  in  its  argument,  though  its 
effect  upon  art  was  in  a  way  misleading, 
because  it  only  substituted  one  convention 
for  another  and  overbore  a  serene  adopted 
tradition  of  admiration  for  certain  received 
forms  of  art  by  a  passionate  individual 
preference,  yet  it  did  something  which  it 


A  Study  in  Personality         91 

never  set  out  to  do.  Only  recently  has  art 
recovered  from  the  despotism  of  Ruskin ; 
it  has  learnt  that  he  was  right,  but  not 
exclusively  right.  We  have  come  to  see 
that  art  must  find  its  own  path,  and  can- 
not run  meekly  in  prescribed  channels;  and 
we  have  learnt  too,  that  the  victory  lies 
with  those  who  can  see  for  themselves,  and 
admire  and  love,  rather  than  with  those 
who  can  repeat  the  dicta  of  critics,  and 
belittle  and  despise. 

But  it  has  done  far  more  than  that.  It 
has  put  art  in  quite  a  different  position, 
not  as  the  indolent  privilege  of  a  few  but 
as  the  stirring  inheritance  of  many;  and 
it  has  shown  too  that  art,  as  well  as  moral- 
ity and  religion,  is  one  of  the  many  stair- 
ways that  lead  men  out  of  the  pit  of 
materialism  to  the  higher  and  purer  glories 
of  mind  and  spirit;  that  life  must  be  a 
choice  and  a  battle;  and  that  the  spiritual 
nature  can  only  grow  by  exercise  and  en- 
deavour; and  that  an  indolent  surrender 
to  mere  sensuous  experience  in  art  is  as 


92  Ruskin 

dangerous  to  the  soul  as  an  unrestrained 
sensualism  to  the  body. 

And  all  this  is  presented  not  only  with 
a  matchless  vigour  and  courage,  but  with 
a  style  that  now  thunders  like  a  falling 
cataract,  and  now  croons  as  sweetly  as  a 
dove  hidden  among  trees;  a  style  that  can 
scathe  with  fiery  invective,  and  stab  with 
piercing  truth,  that  can  rouse  as  with 
martial  music  on  a  day  of  battle,  and  can 
in  a  moment  be  as  the  thought  of  one  who 
saunters,  full  of  joy,  in  a  day  of  early 
spring,  among  the  daffodils  and  windflowers 
of  an  English  copse.  And  then  in  a  mo- 
ment comes  a  touch  of  exquisite  pathos, 
or  of  lambent  irony,  or  of  that  delicious 
humour  that  shows  how  closely  akin 
laughter  is  to  tears.  Nothing  is  so  notable 
about  the  book  as  its  swift  transitions, 
which  give  no  sense  of  an  interrupted 
mood  or  of  an  un  governed  vagueness  of 
thought,  but  which  just  draw  the  mind 
onwards,  with  a  sense  of  true  companion- 
ship, so  that  one  shares  alike  the  joy  and 


A  Study  in  Personality         93 

the  sorrow  of  the  writer,  and  finds  both 
beautiful. 


Before  I  leave  this  period  I  must  mention 
a  letter  which  Iluskin  wrote  to  Professor 
Norton  from  Venice  in  1859.  It  has  this 
special  interest — that  he  was  on  the  verge 
of  a  great  crisis,  and  it  was  almost  the 
last  thing  he  ever  wrote  in  the  old  self- 
confident  manner.  I  confess  that  there  is 
to  me  in  the  letter  a  hint  of  strain,  almost 
of  shrillness,  as  of  one  whose  nerves  are 
strung  too  highly;  and  in  the  tense  and 
almost  exaggerated  humour  of  the  whole, 
there  is  a  touch  of  what  the  Scotch  call 
"  fey  " — a  kind  of  feverish  gaiety  on  the 
edge  of  the  shadow,  presaging  calamity. 

He  describes  himself  as  the  victim  of 
all  kinds  of  "  provocations  " — frostbitten 

fingers,    impatient   gondoliers,    unpunctual 
i 
sacristans  and  servants,  bells,  wind,  rain, 

tides,  and  mud.     It  is  clear  that  he  was 
working  very  hard,  and  always  on  the  edge 


94  Ruskin 

of  great  irritability;  but  the  letter  is  more 
interesting  still  for  another  reason,  which 
I  can  only  explain  by  a  parable. 

We  must  all  know — perhaps  we  realise 
it  more  as  we  grow  older — a  curious  sense, 
partly  amusing  and  partly  pathetic,  which 
arises  on  seeing  a  child  absolutely  intent 
and  absorbed  in  some  self-chosen  occupation 
or  game,  which  may  seem  to  an  older  per- 
son extraordinarily  trivial  or  wearisome, 
yet  which  the  child  pursues  day  after  day 
with  unabated  persistence,  though  it  inter- 
rupts his  relations  with  others  and  renders 
him  apparently,  for  the  time  being,  oblivi- 
ous of  affection  and  even  emotion. 

This  letter  of  Ruskin's  gives  me  the  same 
mixed  sense  of  pathos  and  of  amusement. 
There  is  at  the  surface  the  freakish  kind 
of  humour  over  it  all,  which  shows  how 
easily  he  could  stand  outside  of  himself, 
and  see  the  absurdity  of  his  pettishness. 
Then  there  comes  in  the  pathos  of  it;  and 
this  I  think  resides  in  the  wonder  that  he 
could  have  thought  what  he  was  doing  to 


A  Study  in  Personality         95 

be  really  important!  Of  course  one  must 
not  in  this  world  throw  away  lightly  treas- 
ures of  accumulated  beauty  and  tradition, 
and  still  less  sacrifice  it  all  ruthlessly  to 
brutal  indifferences  or  mere  material  con- 
veniences. But  to  feel  about  any  human 
handiwork  as  Ruskin  was  feeling  then  is 
extravagant,  and  faithless  as  well.  It  can 
only  be  excused  if  one  really  feels  that  the 
human  race  has  exhausted  its  possibilities 
of  beautiful  conception  and  delineation. 
Perhaps  the  strongest  reason  why  the  art- 
istic expression  of  our  time  seems  weak 
and  faltering  is  because  we  have  lost  our 
hearts  too  much  to  the  ancient  beauty  of 
art  and  song;  and  despairing  of  ever  re- 
gaining that  sweet  early  fragrance,  that 
almost  childlike  delight  of  untrammelled 
utterance,  we  have  lived  too  much  in  retro- 
spect, and  too  little  in  touch  with  the 
marching  age. 

I  do  feel  that  there  is  something  unreal 
and  unbalanced  in  these  half-frenzied  la- 
ments over  what  the  world  takes  away, 


96  Ruskin 

laments  not  counterbalanced  by  any  appar- 
ent belief  or  hope  that  life  was  giving  or 
holding  in  store  anything  of  beauty  that 
could  replace  or  supersede  the  old! 

And  then  too  there  runs  through  the 
whole  letter  the  sense  that  Ruskin  is  only 
writing  of  the  outer  life  after  all;  that  it 
is  more  or  less  make-believe;  that  he  is  en- 
deavouring to  persuade  himself  and  others 
that  his  life  is  active,  enthusiastic,  vivid, 
lived  in  eager  ecstasy  with  forms  and 
colours;  while  all  the  while  one  seems  to 
distinguish  beyond  and  beneath  all  this 
laughter  and  emphatic  talk,  some  dark 
current  of  desolate  waters,  a  tide  deriving 
its  motion  and  ebb  from  forces  far  re- 
moved from  earth  and  things  trivial,  from 
the  pulse  of  some  vast,  cold,  gleaming 
thing  moving  silently  in  the  abyss,  which 
was  bearing  away  this  frail  and  delicate 
spirit  for  all  its  well-bred  excitement  and 
fine  enthusiasm  on  a  very  different  journey 
and  to  a  voyage  of  which  the  end  might 
not  be  known. 


A  Study  in  Personality         97 

It  is  the  presence  of  this  deep-seated  sus- 
picion in  Ruskin's  mind,  hardly  even  con- 
sciously realised,  that  he  had  been  hitherto 
pursuing  the  wrong  thoughts  and  the  shal- 
low things,  which  gives,  I  believe,  the  curi- 
ous ring  to  his  letters  about  this  time.  One 
sees  him  trying  to  lift,  or  in  some  cases 
to  pull  down,  the  curtains  of  his  mind,  to 
enlighten,  or  to  beguile  his  nearest  and 
dearest  friends;  and  I  will  therefore  quote 
two  extracts  from  letters,  in  his  own  most 
intimate  and  confiding  strain,  which  show 
what  was  going  on  in  the  innermost  strong- 
hold of  his  mind  and  heart.  Moreover, 
these  two  letters,  written  before  the  great 
change  and  crisis  of  his  life,  gain  much 
interest  and  significance  by  being  written 
to  the  two  great  poets  of  the  age,  Robert 
Browning  and  Tennyson. 

The  first  was  written  in  January,  1859, 
and  not  to  Browning  only,  but  to  his  wife 
as  well. 

I  am  much  helped  by  all  you  say  in  your 
letters — being  apt,  in  spite  of  all  my  certainty 


98  Ruskin 

of  being  right  in  the  main,  to  be  seized  with 
great  fits  of  vexation — for  the  truth  is  that 
my  own  proper  business  is  not  that  of  writ- 
ing; I  am  never  happy  as  I  write;  never  want 
to  utter  for  my  own  delight,  as  you  singers 
do  (with  all  your  pretences  to  benevolence  and 
all  that,  you  know  you  like  singing  just  as 
well  as  the  nightingales).  But  I  'm  truly  bene- 
volent, miserably  benevolent.  For  my  own 
pleasure  I  should  be  collecting  stones  and 
mosses,  drying  and  ticketing  them — reading 
scientific  books — walking  all  day  long  in  the 
summer — going  to  plays,  and  what  not,  in 
winter — never  writing  nor  saying  a  word — 
rejoicing  tranquilly  or  intensely  in  pictures, 
in  music,  in  pleasant  faces,  in  kind  friends. 
But  now — about  me  there  is  thus  terrific  ab- 
surdity and  wrong  going  on.  People  kill  my 
Turner  with  abuse  of  him — make  rifle  targets 
of  my  Paul  Veroneses  — make  themselves,  and 
me,  unendurably  wretched  by  all  sorts  of  ridi- 
culous doings — won't  let  me  be  quiet.  I  live 
the  life  of  an  old  lady  in  a  houseful  of  wicked 
children — can  do  nothing  but  cry  out — they 
won't  leave  me  to  my  knitting-needles  a  mo- 
ment. And  this  working  in  a  way  contrary  to 
one's  whole  nature  tells  upon  one  at  last — 
people  never  were  meant  to  do  it.  They  were 
meant  to  be  able  to  give  quiet  pieces  of  ad- 
vice to  each  other,  and  show,  without  any 


A  Study  in  Personality         99 

advice,  how  things  should  be  done  properly 
(such  as  they  had  gift  and  liking  for).  But 
people  were  never  meant  to  be  always  howling 
and  bawling  the  right  road  to  a  generation  of 
drunken  cabmen,  their  heads  up  through  the 
trapdoor  of  the  hansom,  faces  all  over  mud — 
no  right  road  to  be  got  upon  after  all — nothing 
but  a  drunken  effort  at  turning,  ending  in 
ditch.  I  hope  to  get  just  one  more  howl  exe- 
cuted, from  which  I  hope  great  effect — upon 
the  moon — and  then,  see  if  I  don't  take  to 
kennel  and  straw,  comfortably. 

And  then  there  is  the  letter  to  Tennyson, 
who  had  just  sent  Ruskin  a  present  of  his 
Idylls. 

I  am  not  sure  [he  says]  but  I  feel  the  art 
and  finish  in  these  poems  a  little  more  than  I 
like  to  feel  it.  ...  As  a  description  of  vari- 
ous nobleness  and  tenderness  the  book  is  with- 
out price;  but  I  shall  always  wish  it  had  been 
nobleness  independent  of  a  romantic  condition 
of  externals  in  general. 

In  Memoriam,  Maud,  The  Miller's  Daughter, 
and  such-like  will  always  be  my  own  pet 
rhymes,  but  I  am  quite  prepared  to  admit  this 
to  be  as  good  as  any,  for  its  own  peculiar  audi- 
ence. Treasures  of  wisdom  there  are  in  it, 
and  word-painting  such  as  never  was  yet  for 


TOO  Ruskin 

concentration :  neverthless  it  seems  to  me  that 
so  great  power  ought  not  to  be  spent  on  visions 
of  things  past,  but  on  the  living  present.  For 
one  hearer  capable  of  feeling  the  depth  of  this 
poem,  I  believe  ten  would  feel  a  depth  quite 
as  great  if  the  stream  flowed  through  things 
nearer  the  hearer.  And  merely  in  the  facts  of 
modern  life — not  drawing-room,  formal  life, 
but  the  far-away  and  quite  unknown  growth 
of  souls  in  and  through  any  form  of  misery  or 
servitude — there  is  an  infinity  of  what  men 
should  be  told,  and  what  none  but  a  poet  can 
tell.  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  intense,  mas- 
terful, and  unerring  transcript  of  an  actuality, 
and  the  relation  of  a  story  of  any  real  human 
life,  as  a  poet  would  watch  and  analyse  it, 
would  make  all  men  feel  more  or  less  what 
poetry  was,  as  they  felt  what  Life  and  Fate 
were  in  their  instant  workings.  .  .  .  The  feel- 
ing continually  weighs  upon  me,  day  by  day, 
more  and  more,  that  not  the  grief  of  the  world 
but  the  loss  of  it  is  the  wonder  of  it.  I  see 
creatures  so  full  of  all  power  and  beauty,  with 
none  to  understand  or  teach  or  save  them. 
The  making  in  them  of  miracles,  and  all  cast 
away,  for  ever  lost,  as  far  as  we  can  trace. 
And  no  "  in  memoriam." 

Before  I  say  a  word  about  the  thought 
in  these  two  memorable   letters,   I  would 


A  Study  in  Personality       101 

wish  you  to  notice  what  an  example  they 
are  of  the  extraordinary  sensitiveness  of 
Ruskin's  mind,  in  the  delicate  reflection 
they  give,  in  style  and  language,  of  the 
persons  to  whom  they  were  written.  It  is 
not  fanciful  to  see  in  the  quick,  broken, 
allusive  letter  to  the  Brownings — even  in 
the  constant  omission  of  the  article,  that 
the  very  texture  of  the  letter  was  being 
coloured,  as  it  was  being  written,  by  im- 
aginative sympathy  with  the  method  of 
thought  and  expression  of  the  recipients. 
And  then  in  the  Tennyson  letter,  the  same 
effect  is  observable,  in  the  solemn  and 
stately  cadences  into  which  the  sentences 
fall.  They  are  both  letters  to  people  as 
well  as  letters  from  a  person. 

And  then  observe  how  the  whole  ebb  of 
thought  is  running,  swiftly  and  surely, 
away  from  old  beauty  and  sweet  dreams 
of  peace,  towards  the  cataract  of  modern 
needs  and  problems!  He  is  turning  his 
back  on  the  past;  he  is  engrossed  in  the 
present.  In  the  Browning  letter,  indeed, 


102  Ruskin 

in  spite  of  all  its  tenderness  and  humour, 
there  peeps  out  what  I  cannot  but  call 
the  ugly  part  of  Ruskin's  mind — the  ten- 
dency to  blame  and  censure,  to  feel  that 
every  one  else  is  on  the  wrong  tack,  and 
that  he  himself  is  divinely  appointed  to 
set  them  right.  There  is  a  deep-seated  im- 
patience and  irritability  about  it,  which  I 
cannot  praise.  It  may  be  said  that  the 
pure-hearted  clear-sighted  man  has  a  right 
not  to  be  what  is  horribly  called  mealy- 
mouthed.  But  it  reminds  me,  for  all  that, 
of  the  thankless  servant  in  the  parable, 
who  had  been  forgiven  a  great  debt,  and 
went  out  from  his  Lord's  presence  to  harry 
his  own  humble  debtors.  It  may  be,  as  I 
have  heard  it  plausibly  urged,  that  the  serv- 
ant was  actuated  by  a  severe  sense  of 
honesty,  and  desired  to  pay  back  perhaps 
a  halfpenny  in  the  pound.  But  he  had 
mistaken  the  meaning  of  forgiveness  for 
all  that! 

And  thus  the  letter  to  Tennyson  strikes 
a  humbler  and  a  greater  note — the  sorrow 


A  Study  in  Personality        103 

of  the  waste  of  the  world,  and  "  the  un- 
known growth  of  souls  in  and  through  any 
form  of  misery  and  servitude."  He  was 
close  upon  the  prison-door  himself,  where 
he  was  to  learn  the  sharp  lesson  of  the 
awf ulness  of  humbled  pride ;  he  was  to  learn 
that  each  man's  life  is  a  mystery,  a  secret 
between  himself  and  God — a  secret  not  to 
be  plumbed  by  confident  eyes,  and  a  mys- 
tery not  to  be  made  plain  by  any  clearest 
stream  of  human  eloquence.  And  here  I 
leave  him,  at  the  threshold  of  the  dark 
doorway. 


Ill 


AND  now  in  Ruskin's  fortieth  year,  when 
he  had  lived  out  half  his  days,  there  came 
the  cardo  rerum,  the  hinge  of  destiny,  of 
which  the  Roman  poets  speak,  and  this 
strange  vivid  life  turned  slowly  on  its  pivot. 
I  think  that  this  is  the  right  moment  to 
look  backwards  and  to  look  forwards.  The 
earlier  current  of  his  life  may  be  said  to 
interpret  itself,  like  a  bright  stream  of 
living  water,  rippling  lightly  enough  in 
woodland  places,  with  here  and  there  a 
fall  and  a  waterbreak,  yet  passing  easily 
enough  by  sunny  pools  and  shining  reaches. 
But  now  there  comes  a  change,  and  at  first 
sight  a  tragic  change,  so  much  so,  indeed, 
that  it  wants  a  few  words  of  preparation. 
104 


A  Study  in  Personality       105 

Let  me  look  backwards  first.  And  I 
would  say  that  we  cannot  make  a  greater 
mistake  or  an  easier  mistake,  in  reading 
the  record  of  a  great  life,  than  to  credit 
its  earlier  moods  and  passages  with  some- 
thing of  the  glory  and  greatness  that 
crowned  its  close.  We  think  of  the  earlier 
days  of  famous  men  as  in  some  way  gilded 
and  decorated  with  the  trophies  of  renown, 
the  path  made  easier  to  tread,  inspirited 
by  approval  and  applause.  The  exact  re- 
verse is  generally  the  case.  Many  great 
men  who  have  died  early  have  never  had 
the  consciousness  of  fame  at  all.  Keats, 
for  instance,  was  to  himself  and  his  friends 
an  indolent  and  consumptive  poetaster, 
without  money  or  prospects.  Shelley  was 
a  man  banned  and  branded  in  respectable 
society,  a  byword  for  fantastic  immorality, 
a  crank,  and  worse  than  a  crank.  Kuskin 
himself,  had  he  died  at  this  date,  would 
have  been  little  more  than  a  very  brilliant 
and  rather  fantastic  art-critic,  enabled  by 
his  wealth  to  live  an  artistic  life,  and  to 


io6  Ruskin 

indulge  in  heterodox  and  unusual  views, 
master  of  a  fine  eloquent  style,  and  with 
leisure  to  evolve  an  elaborate  and  rather 
inconclusive  theory  of  art.  He  was  known 
too  by  a  few  as  a  man  of  great  social 
charm,  whimsical,  humorous,  and  sym- 
pathetic. He  had  fame,  of  course,  of  a 
kind,  but  not  the  sort  of  renown  which 
came  to  him  later.  Perhaps  a  few  clear- 
sighted people  saw  that  there  was  something 
nobler  and  richer  behind,  and  suspected 
that  he  was  speaking,  under  symbols  of 
art,  of  something  larger  and  more  vital 
than  the  appreciation  of  style  in  architect- 
ure and  painting.  And  then  if  we  look 
at  the  man  himself,  there  is  hitherto  some- 
thing unreasonable,  over-vehement,  incon- 
siderable about  it  all.  He  had  arrived  at 
his  conclusions  by  instinct,  and  believed 
that  he  had  attained  them  by  reason.  He 
had  been  brought  up  in  a  narrow  and 
secluded  atmosphere;  his  mother  an  un- 
compromising Puritan,  his  father  a  man 
of  deferential  artistic  tastes,  with  a  dim 


A  Study  in  Personality       107 

consciousness  of  thwarted  powers,  and  en- 
ergies devoted  to  an  unromantic  trade,  suc- 
cessful enough  in  a  shy  sort  of  way,  yet 
with  a  dumb  resentment  against  life  which 
he  was  too  proud  to  admit.  Kuskin  was 
hitherto  the  creature  of  circumstance.  He 
had  been  trained  as  a  moralist  and  as  a 
connoisseur;  his  eye  absorbed  in  critical 
observation,  his  hand  versed  in  delineation, 
and  his  mind  set  upon  dominating  opinion 
and  regulating  morality.  He  had  taken 
his  innate  Puritanism  into  his  criticism, 
and  had  tried  to  conform  the  lawlessness 
of  art  to  the  dictates  of  Evangelical  moral- 
ity. He  had  had  his  troubles,  but  they  had 
not  borne  fruit;  he  had  escaped  from  them 
into  his  own  walled  and  moated  paradise; 
he  had  lived  for  himself,  though  quite  will- 
ing to  help  other  people,  as  he  confessed, 
if  it  did  not  interfere  with  his  own  com- 
fort; and  he  had  displayed  a  bigoted  and 
self-centred  temper.  There  is  little  that  is 
wise  or  noble  about  the  man  hitherto.  It 
had  been  a  career  of  unbroken  success  of 


io8  Ruskin 

a  small  and  self-centred  kind;  his  genius 
had  showed  itself  in  his  incredible  labori- 
ousness,  and  in  a  vitality  of  immense  elas- 
ticity and  toughness.  But  not  by  these 
things  is  the  world  changed! 

And  now  he  wras  to  be  given  a  new  heart. 
He  was  to  see  and  to  feel;  he  was  to  be 
mocked  and  derided ;  he  was  to  wrestle  with 
hateful  thoughts;  he  was  to  torment  himself 
over  the  evils  of  society;  he  was  to  build  up 
an  elaborate  scheme  for  its  amelioration. 
His  scheme  was  to  fail,  and  not  even  to  fail 
nobly;  it  was  to  be  viewed  not  only  with 
indifference,  but  with  open  ridicule  and 
contempt.  He  was  at  first  just  kindly 
silenced,  and  bidden  to  concern  himself 
with  his  art,  sent  back  like  a  child  to  its 
toys;  and  when  he  persisted,  he  was  to  be 
called  crazy  and  fantastic.  And  worse 
still,  he  was  to  bear  one  of  the  heaviest 
trials  that  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  man;  he 
was  to  pass  into  the  delirious  shadow-world 
of  insanity,  to  be  mocked  by  his  own 
visions,  in  that  awful  twilight-land  in  which 


A  Study  in  Personality       109 

a  man  cannot  distinguish  between  truth 
and  hallucination.  He  was  to  fix  his  pure 
affections  with  all  the  fiery  intensity  of  a 
virginal  nature  upon  a  girl  far  younger 
than  himself,  and  he  was  to  be  rejected 
on  grounds  of  the  narrow  Evangelicalism 
which  he  had  once  preached,  and  of  which 
he  had  burst  the  bonds.  The  sights  and 
sounds  of  earth,  the  pageantry  of  art,  in 
which  he  had  lived  so  delicately  and  so 
strenuously,  were  to  become  mere  mocking 
echoes  and  scornful  voices,  taunting  him 
with  a  joy  he  could  no  longer  feel;  and  he 
was  to  struggle  on,  with  the  tempest  beat- 
ing over  him  in  crash  after  crash,  until  his 
own  sweet  utterance  was  quenched,  and  he 
was  forced  into  silence  and  inaction.  He 
was  to  fade  into  imbecility  and  invalidism, 
petted  and  soothed  tenderly  enough,  but 
with  the  thwarted  and  pent-up  energy 
breaking  out  into  irritable  bitterness  and 
angry  suspicion.  He  who  had  seen  so 
clearly,  had  judged  so  rigidly,  and  had  de- 
livered so  peremptory  a  message,  was  to 


i  io  Ruskin 

learn  that  there  was  a  stronger  force  still, 
and  that  God  had  a  will  and  a  way  of  His 
own,  larger  and  mightier,  but  at  the  same 
time  infinitely  more  dilatory  and  labyrin- 
thine than  the  scheme  which  the  prophet 
would  have  enforced.  He  was  to  learn  to 
the  full  the  awful  forces  of  stupidity  and 
prejudice,  of  self-interest  and  baseness,  of 
cruelty  and  injustice,  which  made  hourly 
and  daily  havoc  of  life  and  joy.  He  did 
not  learn  to  endure  this  or  to  acquiesce  in 
it,  but  he  was  to  be  bewildered  and  afflicted 
with  the  sorrow  of  the  soul  that  sees  what 
is  amiss,  but  is  helpless  to  stop  it  or  to 
amend  it.  Yet  he  was  to  become,  without 
knowing  it,  in  his  humiliation  and  pain, 
more  august,  more  pathetic,  more  noble, 
more  divine,  till  he  was  to  appear  in  the 
minds  of  all  who  cared  for  purity  and  good- 
ness and  beauty  like  a  seamed  and  scarred 
mountain  peak,  above  the  peaceful  valleys, 
cold  and  lonely  and  isolated,  and  yet  look- 
ing out  across  the  fields  of  life  to  some 
awful  sunrise  of  truth,  climbing  and  glim- 


A  Study  in  Personality       in 

mering  over  shining  tracts  and  unknown 
seas. 

There  have  been  men  of  genius,  men  like 
Browning  and  Wordsworth,  whose  life,  but 
for  some  natural  sorrows  temperately  borne, 
has  been  a  joyful  and  equable  progress 
from  strength  to  strength.  But  as  a  rule 
the  penalty  or  the  privilege  of  genius  is  to 
sorrow  more  bitterly,  to  labour  more  sternly 
than  other  men;  to  torment  itself  beyond 
endurance  over  the  woes  that  seem  so 
tamely  and  trivially  incurred,  which  it  is 
powerless  to  alter;  not  to  know  fame  till 
it  is  valueless,  and  to  find  renown  the  poor- 
est of  flimsy  shields  against  the  stings  of 
self-reproach  and  the  agonies  of  conscious 
failure.  Is  there  one  here — I  hope  with 
all  my  heart  that  there  is  more  than  one 
— who  seeks  not  vainly  or  meanly,  like  the 
Apostles  of  old,  a  seat  of  glory  in  the  king- 
dom of  God?  If  so,  he  must  be  prepared 
to  drink  of  the  bitter  cup,  and  to  find  the 
crown  a  crown  of  thorns.  It  is  sweet  and 
seemly,  dulce  et  decorum,  to  desire  to 


Ruskin 


deserve  fame,  and  natural  enough  to  desire 
it  whether  it  be  deserved  or  no.  But  it  is 
higher  still  to  put  that  all  aside! 

And  now  there  settled  upon  Ruskin's 
mind  a  kind  of  cloud:  who  shall  say  how 
much  of  it  was  experience  and  thought, 
how  much  of  it  the  exhaustion  of  eager 
work  and  faculties  overstrained?  After  he 
had  thus  exultantly  and  with  intensity  of 
conviction  expressed  his  joy  in  art,  he  be- 
gan to  wonder  why  it  was  that  others  did 
not  see  what  he  saw,  did  not  admire  and 
enjoy  what  he  admired  and  enjoyed.  At 
first,  in  his  earlier  writings,  one  can  see 
the  belief,  the  youthful  belief,  I  must  add, 
which  animated  him.  He  took  for  granted 
that  the  spirit  which  loved  and  admired 
and  welcomed  beauty,  and  drank  at  its 
springs,  was  there  in  humanity,  but  as  the 
years  went  on  he  began  to  see  that  it  was 
not  so.  He  saw  that,  all  the  world  over, 
the  majority  of  the  human  race  had  no 
care  or  love  for  these  things  at  all.  He 
had  believed  that  human  beings  were  dull, 


A  Study  in  Personality       113 

only  because  they  admired,  or  tried  to  ad- 
mire, the  wrong  things,  and  he  had  thought 
that  they  had  only  to  be  shown  the  right 
tilings  to  admire  and  love  them.  But  he 
found  that  people  were  at  heart  indifferent, 
and  worse  than  indifferent;  that  the  world 
was  full  of  ugly  desires  and  low  delights; 
that  men  were  selfish  and  cruel  and  sen- 
sual; that  they  loved  wealth  and  comfort 
and  display;  that  many  people  lived  from 
childhood  to  age  under  the  shadow  of  base 
influences  and  devastating  tyrannies;  and 
so  he  began  to  see  that  if  they  were  to 
admire  and  love  what  was  pure  and  noble, 
it  was  not  enough  just  to  point  out  the 
work  of  great  artists,  but  the  nature  of 
man  must  be  somehow  purged  and  changed. 
And  then  he  began  to  speculate  as  to  the 
causes  of  all  this  baseness  and  ugliness, 
and,  as  I  say,  a  shadow  crept  over  him.  He 
had  been  fond  of  society  and  friendship  and 
comfortable  domestic  life ;  but  now  he  with- 
drew into  solitude  and  sad  reflection.  He 
Iiv7ed  much  alone  in  the  Alps  brooding  and 


Ruskin 


meditating     over     tlie     darkness     of     the 
world. 
In  February,  1861,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  : 

I  was  in  terrible  doubt  as  to  what  to  do  for 
a  long  time  this  last  summer  and  winter.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  to  keep  any  clearheaded- 
ness, free  from  intellectual  trouble  and  other 
pains,  no  life  would  do  for  me  but  one  as 
like  Veronese's  as  might  be,  and  I  was  seri- 
ously, and  despairingly,  thinking  of  going  to 
Paris  or  Venice  and  breaking  away  from  all 
modern  society  and  opinion,  and  doing  I  don't 
know  what.  Intense  scorn  of  all  I  had 
hitherto  done  or  thought,  still  intenser  scorn 
of  other  people's  doings  and  thinkings,  espe- 
cially in  religion  .  .  .  and  almost  unendurable 
solitude  in  my  own  home,  only  made  more 
painful  to  me  by  parental  love  which  did  not 
and  never  could  help  me,  and  which  was  cruelly 
hurtful  without  knowing  it;  and  terrible  dis- 
coveries in  the  course  of  such  investigations  as 
I  made  into  grounds  of  old  faith  —  were  all 
concerned  in  this.  ...  As  for  things  that 
have  influenced  me,  I  believe  hard  work,  love 
of  justice  and  of  beauty,  good-nature  and  great 
vanity,  have  done  all  of  me  that  was  worth 
doing.  I  've  had  my  heart  broken,  ages  ago, 
when  I  was  a  boy  —  then  mended,  cracked, 


A  Study  in  Personality        115 

beaten    in,    kicked    about    old    corridors,    and 
finally,  I  think,  flattened  fairly  out. 

But  he  was  to  go  down  deeper  yet  into 
sorrow.  In  March,  1863,  he  wrote  from 
Mornex  to  his  friend  Norton: 

The  loneliness  is  very  great,  and  the  peace 
in  which  I  am  at  present  ...  is  only  as  if 
I  had  buried  myself  in  a  tuft  of  grass  on  a 
battle-field  wet  with  blood — for  the  cry  of  the 
earth  about  me  is  in  my  ears  continually  if  I 
do  not  lay  my  head  to  the  very  ground. 

And  to  similar  effect  a  few  months  later : 

I  am  still  very  unwell,  and  tormented  be- 
tween the  longing  for  rest  and  for  lovely  life, 
and  the  sense  of  the  terrific  call  of  human 
crime  for  resistance,  and  of  human  misery  for 
help — though  it  seems  to  me  as  the  voice  of 
a  river  of  blood  which  can  but  sweep  me  down 
in  the  midst  of  its  black  clots,  helpless. 

Moreover  he  saw  that,  though  much  of 
the  havoc  was  wrought  by  men  who  were 
consciously  selfish  and  tyrannical,  yet  the 
worst  horrors  of  the  system  were  per- 
petuated by  kindly  orthodox  and  respect- 


n6  Ruskin 

able  people,  who  enjoyed  their  comforts, 
and  never  troubled  their  head  as  to  what 
lay  behind,  nor  reflected  how  many  lives 
of  cheerless  labour  were  sacrificed  that  they 
might  fare  delicately  and  sleep  comfortably. 
And  here  one  begins  to  see  a  hint  of  the 
true  genius  of  the  man,  in  his  power  not 
of  sorrowing  mildly  and  ineffectively  over 
evils  that  he  could  not  mend,  but  in  his 
power  of  tormenting  himself  over  the 
troubles  of  others,  his  determination  to 
sacrifice  himself  and  his  fame  to  mending 
what  he  could,  his  resolution  to  use  his 
power  and  his  position  to  make  plain 
the  bitter  truth,  and  to  summon  all  true 
and  brave  and  compassionate  spirits  to  join 
him  in  a  desperate  crusade  against  the  evils 
and  miseries  of  the  world. 

And  now  he  suffered  the  pain  of  finding 
himself  utterly  withdrawn  in  spirit  from 
the  familiar  circle.  His  parents  could  not 
understand  what  he  was  about,  or  why  he 
should  desert  the  path  of  easy  triumph  and 
respectable  display  for  a  lonely  and  thorny 


A  Study  in  Personality       117 

path  among  brambles  and  stones.  What 
made  it  worse  was  that  his  confident 
temper,  his  sense  of  right  vision  and  just 
judgment,  seemed  to  hand  him  instantly  the 
key  to  these  mysteries.  With  Ruskin,  to 
see  a  problem  was  to  see  the  solution  of 
it.  The  difficulties  melted  away,  the  ob- 
stacles vanished.  It  was  the  stupidity  of 
the  world  that  brought  about  the  mischief, 
not  its  malevolence  or  its  indifference.  He 
had  but  to  point  out  the  truth,  and  all 
well-meaning  and  reasonable  people  would 
see  and  follow  it.  So  he  prepared  his  lan- 
tern again,  and  this  time  its  flame  was  fed 
with  far  different  hopes  and  desires. 


Even  as  late  as  the  year  1860,  which  is 
the  year  of  the  great  change  in  Ruskin's 
mind,  his  whole  ideal  of  life  was  a  hope- 
ful one.  He  gave  evidence  in  that  year 
before  a  Committee  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  Public  Institutions,  in  which  he 
spoke  of  his  schemes  for  educating  and  in- 


n8  Ruskin 

structing  the  labouring  classes,  and  noted 
in  them  a  "  thirsty  desire  "  for  culture  and 
improvement.  But  this  was  really  the 
flicker  of  an  expiring  flame,  and  was  said 
more  to  persuade  himself  that  it  was  so, 
than  because  he  really  believed  it  to  be  so. 
He  was  in  the  summer  of  that  year  at 
Chamonix;  but  he  did  little  drawing,  ex- 
cept in  a  half-hearted  and  distracted  way. 
He  walked  much  in  the  pine-woods,  and 
was  thinking  out  a  set  of  papers,  which 
he  wrote  with  infinite  care,  and  read  aloud 
to  his  companions  at  the  breakfast-table. 
The  problem  he  had  at  heart  was  a  social 
one.  It  was  no  less  than  an  attempt  to 
analyse  the  meaning  of  the  word  wealth, 
and  to  give  a  logical  definition  of  it.  And 
as  this  book  and  the  next  that  he  wrote 
were  considered  by  him  to  be  the  most  im- 
portant and  valuable  contributions  he  ever 
made  to  literature,  and  as  also  the  ideas 
he  promulgated  have  become  in  many  ways 
familiar  to  and  accepted  by  the  present  gen- 
eration, it  will  be  as  well  to  pay  careful 


A  Study  in  Personality        119 

attention  to  them.  Now  I  am  very  far  from 
saying  or  believing  that  these  ideas  were 
invented  or  originated  by  Buskin.  That  is 
not  the  way  in  which  great  ideas  spring  up. 
They  arise,  I  believe,  naturally,  by  a  per- 
fectly inevitable  development  in  the  minds 
of  a  generation.  They  are  talked  about, 
hinted  at,  thought  about,  half  enunciated 
by  a  great  many  speakers  and  writers;  and 
then  some  one  author  of  force  and  position 
focusses  the  scattered  rays,  and  a  definite 
school  of  thought  springs  up. 

The  title  Ruskin  gave  his  book  was  Unto 
this  Last.  It  is  taken  from  the  words  of 
the  parable  about  the  labourers  in  the  vine- 
yard, who  at  the  end  of  the  day  were  all 
paid  alike — "  I  wTill  give  unto  this  last  even 
as  unto  thee."  His  idea  was  roughly  thus 
— and  here  I  would  say  that  I  am  follow- 
ing closely  Mrs.  Meynell's  masterly  ana- 
lysis of  the  book — that  wages  of  labour 
should  be  a  fixed  thing,  not  varying  accord- 
ing to  competition.  He  said  that  soldiers 
and  sailors,  government  officials,  railway- 


120  Ruskin 

men,  servants,  and  schoolmasters  received 
fixed  wages,  varying  more  by  the  import- 
ance of  their  work  than  by  its  actual 
quality;  and  that  moreover  revolutionary 
and  socialistic  ideas  did  not  spread  among 
people  thus  paid,  while  they  did  spread 
among  people  whose  wages  varied  in  sym- 
pathy with  commercial  competition.  If 
this  was  so,  why,  he  asked,  should  not  la- 
bour be  paid  on  the  same  lines?  He  main- 
tained that  the  work  of  people  paid  on 
fixed  lines  did  not  suffer  in  quality  because 
of  the  comparative  sense  of  security;  that 
the  unnatural  thing  was  that  the  bad  work- 
man should  be  able  to  offer  his  work  at  a 
lower  price,  so  as  to  undersell  the  good 
workman ;  and  that  the  natural  course  was 
to  regulate  this,  not  to  leave  it  unregulated. 
He  believed  that  the  inequalities  of  employ- 
ment, the  feverish  over-production  of  one 
period,  and  the  languid  under-production 
of  another,  would  be  harmonised  and  tran- 
quillised  by  the  regulation  of  wages,  while 
education  would  tend  to  diminish  the  num- 


A  Study  in  Personality        121 

ber  of  bad  workmen.  He  thought  too  that 
the  employers  would  come  to  realise  the 
administrative  nature  of  their  functions, 
like  the  lawyer  and  the  bishop  and  the 
statesman,  and  regard  themselves  as  serv- 
ants of  the  State,  whose  duty  was  to  pro- 
vide and  supply  commodities,  rather  than 
as  men  aiming  at  grabbing  what  profit  they 
could  at  the  expense  of  the  community.  He 
held  that  the  commercial  system  was  based 
upon  the  art  of  keeping  others  poor,  if  pos- 
sible; and  that  people  were  misled  by  see- 
ing a  class  enriched  into  thinking  that 
the  community  was  therefore  richer.  The 
economists  of  the  day  maintained  that  de- 
mand and  supply  could  not  be  controlled 
by  human  legislation.  To  this  Kuskin  re- 
plied :  "  Precisely  in  the  same  sense  .  .  . 
the  waters  of  the  world  go  where  they  are 
required.  Where  the  land  falls  the  water 
flows.  .  .  .  But  the  disposition  and  the 
administration  .  .  .  can  be  altered  by  hu- 
man forethought." 

Of  course  this  is  all  really  socialistic,  be- 


122  Ruskin 

cause  it  is  opposed  to  irresponsible  indi- 
vidualistic forces,  such  as  competition  and 
monopoly;  but  Kuskin  maintained  that  he 
was  a  Free  Trader,  though  on  grounds 
wholly  opposed  to  the  popular  theories  of 
Free  Trade.  He  went  on  to  define  wealth 
as  the  possession  of  a  large  stock  of  use- 
ful articles  which  we  can  use;  and  his  plea 
was  for  publicity  about  all  commercial  deal- 
ing. "  The  general  law,"  he  writes,  "  re- 
specting just  or  economical  exchange  is 
simply  this:  there  must  be  advantage  on 
both  sides  (or  if  only  advantage  on  one, 
at  least  no  disadvantage  on  the  other)  .  .  . 
and  just  payment  for  his  time,  intelligence, 
and  labour  to  any  intermediate  person 
effecting  the  transaction.  .  .  .  And  what- 
ever advantage  there  is  on  either  side,  and 
whatever  pay  is  given  to  the  intermediate 
person,  should  be  thoroughly  known." 

His  main  solution  was  this.  "  Not  greater 
wealth,  but  simpler  pleasure.  .  .  .  Waste 
nothing  and  grudge  nothing.  Care  in  no- 
wise to  make  more  of  money,  but  care  to 


S  Study  in  Personality       123 

make  much  of  it;  remembering  always  the 
great,  palpable,  inevitable  fact — that  what 
one  person  has,  another  cannot  have.  .  .  . 
And  if,  on  due  and  honest  thought  over 
these  things,  it  seems  that  the  kind  of  ex- 
istence to  which  men  are  now  summoned 
by  every  plea  of  pity  and  claim  of  right 
may,  for  some  time  at  least,  not  be  a  lux- 
urious one; — consider  whether,  even  sup- 
posing it  guiltless,  luxury  could  be  desired 
by  any  of  us,  if  we  saw  clearly  at  our  sides 
the  suffering  which  accompanies  it  in  the 
world  .  .  .  the  crudest  man  living  could 
not  sit  at  his  feast,  unless  he  sat 
blindfold." 

Now  does  all  this  seem  a  fantastic  dream, 
or  does  it  seem,  at  this  date,  only  a  some- 
what belated  perception  of  obvious  truths? 
All  this  translated  into  modern  English  is 
but  the  principle  of  the  living  wage,  the 
old-age  pension,  public  education,  improved 
housing,  and  compensation  for  improve- 
ments. These  are  all  ideas  upon  which 
there  is  some  difference  of  opinion,  but  the 


124  Ruskin 

principles  are  familiar,  and  accepted  by  all 
reasonable  people. 

Yet  what  was  the  reception  of  Buskin's 
book?  He  sent  the  papers  to  the  Cornhill, 
of  which  his  friend  Thackeray  was  the 
editor.  Three  papers  appeared;  and  then 
Thackeray,  writing  frankly  and  kindly,  said 
that  they  were  so  universally  condemned 
and  disliked  that  he  could  only  admit  one 
more — and  this  to  a  man  who  was  known 
as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  popular 
writers  of  the  day.  He  himself  took  his 
defeat  very  hard,  and  fell  into  great  depres- 
sion. "  I  sulked,"  he  wrote  of  himself, 
through  the  winter,  drawing  a  good  deal, 
and  working  fitfully,  but  in  enfeebled 
health.  Later  on  in  the  following  year  he 
went  off  to  Switzerland,  and  established 
himself  in  a  little  chalet  near  Geneva,  two 
thousand  feet  up,  at  the  end  of  all  carriage 
roads.  He  thought  of  buying  and  restoring 
a  fine  old  chateau.  But  he  gave  up  the  idea, 
saying  "  that  I  never  had  the  gift,  nor  had 
I  then  the  energy,  to  make  anything  of  a 


A  Study  in  Personality       125 

place."  So  lie  rambled  about  and  wrote  a 
set  of  papers  on  political  economy,  now 
known  as  Munera  Pulveris,  which  he  sent 
to  Froude,  then  editor  of  Fraser's  Magazine. 
The  result  was  even  more  disastrous  than 
before.  "  Only  a  genius  like  Mr.  Ruskin 
could  have  produced  such  hopeless  rub- 
bish," said  a  leading  newspaper.  His 
father,  then  not  far  from  his  end,  spoke 
his  mind  in  sorrow  and  bitterness;  not  only 
did  he  hate  the  sacrifice  of  reputation  in- 
volved, and  the  obloquy  which  resulted,  but 
he  thought  the  whole  theory  absurd  and 
perverse. 

Carlyle,  almost  alone  of  his  friends,  stood 
by  Ruskin.  He  said  of  the  two  books  that 
he  approved  of  them  in  every  particular; 
that  in  every  part  of  Unto  this  Last,  just 
published  in  book  form,  he  found  "  a  high 
and  noble  sort  of  truth,  not  one  doctrine 
that  I  can  intrinsically  dissent  from  or 
count  other  than  salutary  in  the  extreme, 
and  pressingly  needed  in  England  above 
all." 


126  Ruskin 

But  the  public  would  have  none  of  it. 
The  publisher  of  Eraser's  told  Froude 
flatly  that  the  series  must  stop,  and  only 
four  papers  appeared.  Carlyle,  talking  to 
Froude  on  the  subject,  said  "  that  when 
Solomon's  Temple  was  building  it  was 
credibly  reported  that  at  least  ten  thousand 
sparrows  sitting  on  the  trees  round  declared 
that  it  was  entirely  wrong — quite  contrary 
to  received  opinion — hopelessly  condemned 
by  public  opinion,  etc.  Nevertheless  it  got 
finished,  and  the  sparrows  flew  away  and 
began  to  chirp  in  the  same  note  about 
something  else." 


But  all  this  helped  Kuskin  little.  He  fell 
into  great  despondency,  which  he  tried  to 
relieve  by  a  study  of  Alpine  Geology.  And 
then  a  fresh  sorrow  fell  upon  him.  His 
father  died  in  1864.  He  showed  his  con- 
fidence in  his  son  by  bequeathing  him  a 
great  fortune,  £120,000  in  cash,  besides 
much  house  property,  and  leaving  the  house 


A  Study  in  Personality       127 

and  £37,000  to  his  wife.  Father  and  son 
had  come  together  again  in  the  last  few 
months,  to  Ruskin's  infinite  happiness.  The 
first  use  he  made  of  his  fortune  was  to 
hand  over  some  £17,000  to  relatives  to 
whom  the  arrangements  of  the  will  had 
caused  disappointment,  and  to  spend  nearly 
as  much  in  setting  up  a  relative  in  trade, 
who  promptly  lost  the  whole  sum.  The 
money  melted  away  like  snow  in  his  hands ; 
he  devoted  himself  to  his  mother  and  tried 
to  fill  the  gap :  he  was  always  the  tenderest 
and  most  dutiful  of  sons. 

The  epitaph  he  inscribed  over  his  father's 
grave  in  the  churchyard  of  Shirley,  near 
Croydon,  is  so  beautiful  and  so  character- 
istic that  I  may  here  quote  it: 

Here  rests  from  day's  well  sustained  bur- 
den John  James  Ruskin,  born  in  Edinburgh 
May  10th,  1785.  He  died  in  his  house  in  Lon- 
don, March  3rd,  1864.  He  was  an  entirely 
honest  merchant,  and  his  memory  is  to  all 
who  keep  it  dear  and  helpful.  His  son,  whom 
he  loved  to  the  uttermost,  and  taught  to  speak 
truth,  says  this  of  him." 


128  Ruskin 

Yet  at  the  same  time  he  had  been  enjoying 
a  happy  and  compensating  experience.  The 
head-mistress  of  a  big  girls'  boarding-school 
at  Winnington  in  Cheshire  had  taken  some 
pupils  to  hear  him  lecture  in  Manchester, 
and  persuade  him  to  pay  the  school  a  visit. 
It  was  a  great  old-fashioned  country  house, 
in  a  park  of  fine  trees  sloping  down  to  a 
river.  The  idea  was  to  make  the  whole 
thing  as  homelike  as  possible.  Euskin  was 
always  fond  of  girlhood,  though  there  is  no 
evidence  that  he  took  the  slightest  interest 
in  boyhood.  He  had  never  been  at  school 
himself,  and  little  boys  were  to  him  like 
miniature  savages,  in  whom  the  selfishness, 
the  cruelty,  and  the  boisterousness  of  hu- 
manity had  not  been  chastened  or  refined 
by  experience.  One  cannot  have  every- 
thing in  everybody;  and  it  is  idle  to  deny 
a  certain  feminine  touch  in  Ruskin's  na- 
ture, instinctive  and  fostered  by  seclusion, 
which  made  him  all  his  life  more  at  ease 
in  the  society  of  women  than  of  men.  Per- 
haps he  overvalued  sympathy  and  demon- 


A  Study  in  Personality       129 

strative  affection  and  petting  and  tender 
ways  of  life;  sometimes  the  long-haired 
maidens  of  Winnington  betrayed  him  into 
a  sort  of  semi-paternal  sentimentality.  But 
to  sneer  at  it  all,  or  to  grudge  him  the 
sort  of  happiness  he  derived  from  it,  is  a 
cheap  and  coarse  cynicism.  He  was  a  very 
unhappy  man  at  this  time,  feeling  the 
weight  of  the  world,  conscious  of  failure 
and  ineffectiveness.  And  the  children  at 
Winnington  gave  him  what  he  needed,  and 
what  only  a  few  very  wise  and  tender- 
hearted men — friends  like  Carlyle,  Burne- 
Jones,  Norton,  and  Acland  could  give  him ; 
like  the  little  maid  in  Guenevere,  these 
merry  and  wholesome-minded  girls  "pleased 
him  with  a  babbling  heedlessness  that  often 
lured  him  from  himself."  He  devised  games 
and  dances  for  them;  he  told  them  stories, 
taught  them  drawing:  for  ten  years  he  was 
a  constant  visitor.  He  wrote  a  little  book 
for  them,  Ethics  of  the  Dust,  a  set  of  con- 
versational lectures  on  Crystals;  but  the 
girls  to  whom  the  book  was  playfully  dedi- 


130  Ruskin 

cated  did  not  wholly  appreciate  it.  They 
recognised  their  own  portraits,  drawn  with 
a  gentle  perception  of  their  little  failings; 
but  nearly  twenty  years  after,  the  book, 
which  had  wholly  hung  fire,  bounded  into 
popularity,  and  it  was  seen  that  in  educa- 
tion, as  in  many  other  things,  Ruskin  had 
been  a  few  steps  in  advance  of  his  time. 

In  1866  he  had  more  melancholy  experi- 
ences. His  great  friend  Lady  Trevelyan 
was  ordered  abroad,  and  Ruskin  took  his 
cousin  Joanna  with  him  to  join  her.  The 
day  that  he  started,  he  called  at  Carlyle's 
house  at  Cheyne  Walk,  to  leave  a  few 
flowers  as  a  parting  gift  with  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle,  that  wonderfully  gifted,  sharp-tongued, 
courageous,  devoted  woman,  whose  life  had 
been  so  full  of  strange  suffering,  and  who 
won  such  intense  affection  from  her  friends. 
He  was  told  at  the  door  that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
had  died  suddenly  in  her  carriage  that 
afternoon,  from  the  shock  of  trying  to  save 
her  dog  from  being  run  over.  Carlyle  was 
away  in  Scotland,  after  delivering  a  Rec- 


A  Study  in  Personality       131 

torial  address  at  Edinburgh.  Kuskin  wrote 
to  Carlyle,  and  received  in  reply  from  the 
old  man,  writing  in  the  depth  of  his  re- 
morseful agony  of  spirit,  one  of  the  noblest 
letters  I  know  in  literature: 

Your  kind  words  were  welcome  to  me ;  thanks. 
I  did  not  doubt  your  sympathy  in  what  has 
come;  but  it  is  better  that  I  see  it  laid  be- 
fore me.  You  are  yourself  very  unhappy,  as 
I  too  well  discern — heavy-laden,  obstructed, 
and  dispirited;  but  you  have  a  great  work 
still  ahead,  and  will  gradually  have  to  gird 
yourself  up  against  the  heat  of  the  day,  which 
is  coming  on  for  you,  as  the  Night  too  is  com- 
ing. Think  valiantly  of  these  things.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  my  life  all  laid  in  ruins,  and  the  one 
light  of  it  as  if  gone  out.  .  .  .  Come  and  see 
me  when  you  get  home;  come  oftener  and  see 
me,  and  speak  more  frankly  to  me  (for  I  am 
very  true  to  your  highest  interests  and  you) 
while  I  still  remain  here.  You  can  do  nothing 
for  me  in  Italy;  except  come  home  improved 
[i.  e.,  in  health]. 

But  before  the  letter  reached  Ruskin, 
Lady  Trevelyan  was  dead,  after  a  few  days' 
illness  at  Neuchatel.  He  threw  himself  into 


132  Ruskin 

the  sad  task  of  trying  to  comfort  and  sus- 
tain the  rest  of  the  party,  and  wrote  to  a 
friend  in  England: 

I  've  had  a  rather  bad  time  of  it  at  Neu- 
chaiel;  what  with  death  and  the  north  wind; 
both  devil's  inventions  as  far  as  I  can  make 
out.  But  things  are  looking  a  little  better 
now,  and  I  had  a  lovely  three  hours'  walk  by 
the  lake  shore,  in  cloudless  calm,  from  five  to 
eight  this  morning,  under  hawthorn  and  chest- 
nut— here  just  in  full  blossom — and  among 
other  pleasantnesses — too  good  for  mortals,  as 
the  North  Wind  and  the  rest  of  it  are  too  bad. 
We  don't  deserve  either  such  blessing  or  such 
cursing,  it  seems  to  poor  moth  me. 

And  now  he  flung  himself  again  into 
schemes  for  social  reform.  There  was  a 
working  man  of  Sunderland,  a  cork-cutter 
called  Thomas  Dixon,  who  wrote  to  Ruskin, 
raising  several  practical  points.  Kuskin 
replied  in  a  series  of  twenty-five  letters,  in 
which  he  constructed  a  kind  of  Utopia, 
an  ideal  commonwealth  on  mediaeval  and 
feudal  lines.  He  designed  a  system  of 
trade  guilds,  a  state  church,  a  theory  of 


A  Study  in  Personality       133 

government.  It  is  semi-socialistic  and 
semi-individualistic — indeed  it  is  hard  to 
classify;  but  the  point  is  that  outward 
liberty  can  only  be  based  on  inward  law. 

The  book  was  mercilessly  derided,  and  it 
is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  he  almost 
courted  derision  by  elaborating  fantastic 
details.  The  same  thing  vitiated  his  work 
later  on.  The  prophet  must  indicate  laws 
rather  than  lay  down  ordinances;  and 
there  were  plenty  of  people  who  could  not 
understand  the  nobility  of  the  book,  who 
were  quite  able  to  laugh  at  the  idea  of 
young  unmarried  people  being  examined  in 
moral  culture,  and  receiving  a  degree  or 
diploma — they  were  to  be  called  respectively 
bachelors  and  rosicres — before  they  could 
obtain  a  license  to  marry.  Ruskin  never 
quite  understood  that  humanity  must  set- 
tle its  own  details,  and  will  not  make  a 
clean  sweep  of  accustomed  traditions.  But 
Time  and  Tide,  by  Wear  and  Tyne,  as  the 
book  is  beautifully  called,  has  a  real  value, 
for  all  its  pretty  absurdities,  and  must  be 


134  Ruskin 

studied   by   all   who   wish   to   discern   the 
progress  of  Kuskin's  mind. 

In  these  distracted  years  he  wandered 
much  about  England,  lost  himself  a  little 
in  the  study  of  Mineralogy,  invented  a  new 
theory  of  mountain  cleavage,  experimenting 
with  custard  and  dough.  It  is  a  desultory 
record.  No  doubt  his  health  had  much  to 
do  with  his  feverish  and  fitful  interests; 
and  he  had  a  private  sorrow  deep  in  his 
heart;  but  through  it  all  one  discerns  what 
I  have  before  spoken  of,  and  if  one  over- 
looks this,  one  misses  the  real  significance 
of  Euskin's  life — the  intense  preoccupation 
with  the  idea  of  helping  and  improving  the 
life  of  humanity.  Mental  depression  is 
often  a  physical  thing  and  an  unreal  thing; 
but  it  does  one  thing — it  brings  out  what 
is  deepest  in  a  man,  though  it  exaggerates 
and  darkens  the  picture.  Such  sorrows 
show  what  a  man  really  cares  about  at  the 
bottom  of  his  heart;  and  though  one  may 
say  that  Kuskin  took  a  distorted  and  pessi- 
mistic view  of  life  and  its  issues,  yet  grief 


A  Study  in  Personality       135 

revealed  his  true  hopes  and  fears.  An 
idler  and  a  shallower  man  would  have 
drifted  into  hypochondria  and  invalidism. 
Ruskin  tormented  himself  into  something 
like  insanity  over  the  unintelligible  riddle 
of  the  world. 

But  one  need  not  darken  the  picture.  He 
was  a  man  who  could  rule  himself.  And 
there  were  countless  people  at  this  time  who 
wrote  to  him  and  met  him,  who  found  him 
the  truest  of  friends  and  the  most  delight- 
ful of  companions.  Men  and  women  in 
trouble  and  doubt  and  perplexity  wrote  to 
him  from  all  over  England,  and  received  in 
reply  letters  full  of  humour  and  shrewdness 
and  good  sense.  Hardly  a  letter  ever  came 
from  his  pen  which  has  not  some  delicious 
stroke  of  humour,  some  deep  and  arresting 
phrase;  while  to  his  companions  his  very 
desultoriness  had  an  incessant  charm.  He 
would  pass  from  subject  to  subject,  show 
pictures  or  minerals  with  marvellous  per- 
ception of  their  motive  and  quality;  and  it 
is  'strange  that  one  whose  utterances  are 


136  Ruskin 

often  so  dogmatic,  and  even  so  perverse, 
should  have  been  in  private  life  so  cour- 
teous and  winning,  so  gay  and  modest. 
Few  people  probably  suspected  the  strain 
at  which  he  was  living,  or  the  helpless  dis- 
tress with  which  in  his  solitary  moments 
he  fell  into  despondency  and  even  fury  of 
misery  over  the  wrongs  and  sufferings  of 

the  world.    And  all  the  time  he  was  lee- 

• 

turing,  sketching,  revising,  writing,  with  an 
industry  that  burnt  like  a  steady  flame. 
He  went  to  Venice  in  order  to  correct  his 
Stones  of  Venice;  here  he  had  a  great  joy, 
the  discovery  of  Carpaccio's  pictures;  and 
for  a  little  while  he  seemed  to  recover 
the  joy  of  his  youth.  He  was  enraptured 
by  the  frescoes  of  the  life  of  St.  Ursula; 
and  the  study  of  her  legend  played  so  curi- 
ous a  part  in  his  after  life  that  I  must  say 
a  few  words  about  it.  He  may  almost  have 
been  said  to  have  fallen  in  love  with  St. 
Ursula,  with  a  spiritual  passion  such  as 
Dante's.  She  became  a  living  ideal,  a  sort 
of  patron  saint  to  him.  Her  patience  and 


A  Study  in  Personality        137 

her  sweetness  became  to  him  a  pattern  and 
an  example;  and  the  thought  of  her,  as  one 
of  his  old  friends  wrote,  "  led  him — not  al- 
ways, but  far  more  than  his  correspondents 
knew — to  burn  the  letters  of  sharp  retort 
upon  stupidity  and  impertinence,  and  to 
force  the  wearied  brain  and  overstrung 
nerves  into  patience  and  a  kindly  answer." 
There  followed  a  time  of  quiet  work  at 
home;  there  was  much  business  to  be 
done.  His  cousin  Joanna  Agnew,  now 
Mrs.  Severn,  was  installed  at  Herne  Hill. 
This  had  a  very  beneficial  result  upon 
Ruskin's  health  and  state  of  mind.  The 
business  drew  off  his  thoughts  from  the 
problems  of  life  and  from  his  own  sense 
of  failure,  in  the  direction  of  hard  me- 
chanical tangible  work.  His  cousin — I  may 
venture  to  say  this,  because  it  is  an  open 
secret  to  her  innumerable  friends — was  the 
most  perfect  sisterly  influence  that  had 
ever  come  into  his  life.  She  was,  and  is, 
one  of  the  most  tender-hearted,  sympathetic, 
and  blithe  of  beings.  She  had  great  prac- 


138  Ruskin 

tical  energy,  complete  unselfishness,  and 
abounding  cheerfulness;  and  she  threw  the 
whole  of  her  large-hearted  nature  into  the 
congenial  and  instinctive  task  of  making 
her  immediate  circle  happy.  Indeed,  her 
companionship  was  one  of  the  supreme 
blessings  of  Ruskin's  life — she  shone  like 
the  sun  upon  his  mournful  temperament. 
And  then  too  a  bereavement  has  a  won- 
derful way  of  evoking  love.  People  often 
learn,  in  the  shadow  of  a  great  loss,  how 
little  all  the  restless  aims  of  humanity 
really  count,  when  compared  with  the  nur- 
ture and  tendance  of  devoted  affection. 
They  sorrow  over  old  coldnesses  and  past 
instances  of  selfishness  and  hardness.  They 
try  to  do  better,  to  be  more  tender,  more 
self-effacing.  Ruskin  himself,  with  all  his 
wistful  longings  for  human  sympathy,  was  a 
lonely  man;  and  his  harsh  old  mother,  for 
all  her  grimness  and  censoriousness,  had  a 
spring  of  exquisite  devotion  in  her  heart. 
The  two  tried  hard,  in  this  dark  time,  to 
be  more  to  each  other,  and  built  up  a  new 


A  Study  in  Personality       139 

bond,  rooted  in  sorrow,  which  never  after- 
wards wholly  failed  them. 

His  mother  was  now  nearly  ninety  years 
of  age,  almost  blind,  but  in  full  vigour  of 
mind,  and  ruling  her  household  and  her  son 
with  inexorable  kindness.  She  had  quite  a 
retinue  of  aged  and  inefficient  servants, 
none  of  whom  was  ever  sent  away,  and  for 
whom  duties  proportioned  to  blindness  and 
decrepitude  had  to  be  invented.  Grim  she 
was,  but  she  loved  her  son  "  like  an  old 
fierce  lioness,"  and  though  she  snubbed  him 
unmercifully  herself  and  ordered  him  about, 
she  would  allow  no  one  else  to  disparage 
him.  She  died  in  the  last  month  of  the 
year  1871,  saying  that  she  did  not  hope 
to  be  so  high  in  heaven  as  to  be  with  her 
husband,  but  perhaps  near  enough  to  see 
him.  And  Ruskin  was  left  with  a  surpris- 
ing sense  of  loneliness.  "  Here,  beside  my 
father's  body,"  he  wrote  on  her  tomb,  "  I 
have  laid  my  mother's:  nor  was  dearer 
earth  ever  returned  to  earth,  nor  purer  life 
recorded  in  heaven." 


140  Ruskin 

He  wrote,  long  years  after,  to  a  great 
friend : 

There  is  no  human  sorrow  like  it.  The 
father's  loss,  however  loved  he  may  have  been, 
yet  can  be  in  great  part  replaced  by  friend- 
ship with  old  and  noble  friends.  The  mother's 
is  a  desolation  which  I  could  not  have  con- 
ceived, till  I  felt  it.  When  I  lost  my  mistress, 
the  girl  for  whom  I  wrote  Sesame  and  Lilies, 
I  had  no  more — nor  have  ever  had  since,  nor 
shall  have — any  joy  in  exertion :  but  the  loss 
of  my  mother  took  from  me  the  power  of 
Rest. 


And  Carlyle  too  opened  his  heart  wide 
to  the  friend  who  was  set  on  speaking  whole- 
some truth  to  the  world,  and  who  had  been 
so  sternly  rebuffed.  We  can  hear  the  echoes 
of  Carlyle's  talks  and  Carlyle's  ideas — the 
"  heroic,  aristocratic,  stoic  ideals,"  as  they 
have  been  finely  called — in  Buskin's  work. 
Carlyle  was  much  interested  then  in  the 
question  of  public  libraries,  and  gave  Rus- 
kin's  mind  an  impulse  in  this  direction. 


A  Study  in  Personality        141 

The  result  was  a  book — three  lectures — 
which  is  perhaps  the  most  popular  of  all 
Ruskin's  writings,  and  also  one  of  the  best 
and  most  memorable  of  his  utterances — the 
little  volume  known  whimsically  enough  as 
Sesame  and  Lilies.  No  one  has  ever  rightly 
fathomed  the  meaning  of  the  title.  Sesame 
is,  I  believe,  a  kind  of  oily  seed  or  grain 
that  used  to  be  made  into  biscuits — it  has 
nothing  here  to  do  with  the  charm  "  Open 
Sesame "  in  the  story  in  the  Arabian 
Nights,  at  which  all  doors  flew  open;  and 
there  is  a  quotation  from  Isaiah,  which 
Ruskin  makes,  about  lilies  blooming  in  the 
desert.  I  suppose  the  things  symbolised 
are  solid  nurture  and  pure  loveliness. 

The  first  lecture,  Of  King's  Treas- 
uries, under  cover  of  being  a  plea  for 
solid  reading,  is  really  a  denunciation  of 
mere  reading,  and  particularly  of  purpose- 
less reading.  Kuskin  makes  a  kind  of 
Index  Expurgatorius;  and  as  he  bans  and 
excludes  all  theologians,  except  Jeremy 
Taylor,  and  the  work  of  all  non-Christian 


142  Ruskin 

moralists,  except  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  Sopho- 
cles, and  Euripides,  all  modern  historians, 
all  philosophers,  all  Thackeray,  George 
Eliot,  Kingsley,  Swift,  Hume,  Macaulay, 
and  Emerson,  to  mention  just  a  few  of  his 
bugbears,  the  result  is  not  a  very  wide 
range  of  reading.  But  here,  as  so  often 
in  Kuskin,  the  book  is  only  a  statement  of 
passionate  personal  preferences;  and  as 
Kuskin,  side  by  side  with  impassioned  bless- 
ing, could  never  refrain  from  copious  curs- 
ing, the  verdict  need  not  be  taken  as  final. 
His  main  thesis  was,  that  as  life  was  short 
and  leisure  scanty,  no  time  should  be  wasted 
in  reading  worthless  books. 

He  begins  by  laying  down  a  principle 
about  the  effects  of  reading.  He  says  that 
the  ordinary  reader,  on  laying  down  a  book, 
is  apt  to  say :  "  How  good  that  is — that 's 
exactly  what  I  think!"  The  right  feeling, 
Euskin  says,  is  rather :  "  How  strange  that 
is!  I  never  thought  of  that  before,  and 
yet  I  see  that  it  is  true,  or  if  I  do  not,  I 
hope  I  shall  some  day  " ;  and  he  adds  the 


A  Study  in  Personality       143 

advice :  "  Be  sure  that  you  go  to  the  author 
to  get  at  his  meaning,  not  to  find  yours." 

From  this  principle  I  humbly  and  heart- 
ily dissent.  My  own  belief  is  rather  that 
no  human  being  is  ever  taught  anything 
unless  he  knows  it  already;  that  one  goes 
to  books  to  recognise  and  not  to  learn; 
that  the  best  and  most  inspiring  authors 
are  not  those  who  tell  you  what  they  be- 
lieve, but  who  show  the  reader  what  he 
believes;  and  that  the  writers  who  really 
move  an  age  are  those  who  express  clearly 
and  forcibly  what  most  people  are  feeling 
lamely  and  obscurely,  while  the  authors 
who  fail  to  get  a  hearing — I  am  speaking 
of  course  of  men  of  proved  and  unques- 
tioned power — are  those  who  are  either  be- 
hind the  age  or  in  advance  of  it.  That  is 
only  my  own  opinion,  and  you  are  quite  at 
liberty  to  believe  Ruskin! 

Then  there  is  a  curious  passage  about  the 
intent  study  of  words.  And  this  again  is 
vitiated  by  prejudice.  Ruskin  regretted  the 
introduction  into  English  of  Greek  and 


144  Ruskin 

Latin  words,  and  viewed  their  intrusion  as 
lie  might  view  a  torrent  of  mud  poured 
into  a  crystal  pool — "  our  mongrel  tongue  " 
he  calls  it.  And  this  declaration  I  must 
not  only  combat,  I  must  firmly  and  seri- 
ously deny  it.  The  extraordinary  richness 
and  elasticity  of  English,  our  incomparable 
language,  is  entirely  due  to  the  fact  that  we 
have  had  no  fastidious  delicacy  or  pedantic 
severity  about  taking  words  for  our  use. 
If  we  want  a  word,  we  find  one;  if  a  word 
gets  limited  to  a  nuance,  we  take  another 
word  for  another  shade  of  meaning.  Lan- 
guage was  made  for  man,  not  man  for 
language.  We  do  not  always  choose  eupho- 
niously, or  with  due  regard  for  the  seemly 
sight  and  sound  of  words;  and  we  have 
too  a  rather  illiterate  admiration  for  poly- 
syllabic vocables.  But  I  have  no  patience 
whatever  with  purists  who  would  arrest 
the  development  of  a  language.  In  lan- 
guage, I  am  all  for  free  trade  rather  than 
for  protection.  Buskin's  own  writing,  pure 
and  melodious  as  it  is,  is  a  perpetual  con- 


A  Study  in  Personality       145 

tradiction  to  his  own  principles.  Of  course 
there  is  an  exquisite  beauty  in  sweet  old 
large  homely  words;  but  as  thought  be- 
comes finer  and  more  subtle,  language  must 
grow  more  elastic.  And  I  must  beg  of  you 
not  to  be  misled  in  this  matter  by  the 
pedants  whose  economy  of  language  corre- 
sponds to  leanness  of  thought. 

The  second  lecture  is  Of  Queens'  Gar- 
dens. It  is  addressed  to  the  women  of  the 
leisured  classes,  and  Kuskin  draws  out  his 
ideal  of  pure  womanhood  as  the  counter- 
part of  knightly  chivalry.  He  shows  what 
the  heroic  temper  of  womanhood  ought  to 
be,  and  how  it  may  be  achieved.  "  The 
fashion  of  the  time,"  he  says,  "renders 
whatever  is  forward,  coarse,  or  senseless 
in  feminine  nature,  palpable  to  all  men." 
The  girl  is  to  be  trained  in  accurate 
thought ;  not  to  be  brought  up  in  a  prudish 
and  unreal  mystery,  but  to  learn  the  love- 
liness, and  the  inevitableness  too,  of  nat- 
ural laws.  She  is  "  to  follow,"  he  says,  "  at 
least  some  one  path  of  scientific  attainment 


146  Ruskin 

as  far  as  to  the  threshold  of  that  bitter 
Valley  of  Humiliation,  into  which  only  the 
wisest  and  bravest  of  men  can  descend, 
owning  themselves  for  ever  children,  gath- 
ering pebbles  on  a  boundless  shore." 

Then  he  turns  to  the  girl  herself.  He 
shows  that  men  are  bound  by  law  and  cir- 
cumstance, but  that  "  against  the  sins  of 
womanhood  there  is  no  legislation,  against 
her  destructiveness  no  national  protest,  no 
public  opinion  against  her  cruelty."  He 
implores  her  to  learn  not  to  be  idle,  but  to 
cultivate  her  natural  compassion  with  all 
her  might,  and  to  use  it  daily  and  hourly 
to  heal  the  pain  of  the  world. 

Here  Kuskin  is  at  his  very  noblest  and 
highest,  on  sure  and  incontestable  ground. 
And  the  visible  pulse  and  thrill  of  his 
thought  gains  a  poignant  intensity  from  the 
fact  that  he  had  one  particular  girl  in  view, 
of  whom  I  must  speak  later,  the  love  of 
whom  was  the  deepest  passion  of  Ruskin 's 
life,  and  her  rejection  of  his  love  the  deep- 
est sorrow  that  ever  devastated  his  days. 


A  Study  in  Personality       147 

And  then  to  these  two  lectures  he  added 
a  third,  The  Mystery  of  Life  and  its 
Arts,  which  every  one  must  read  who  de- 
sires to  spell  the  secret  of  Ruskin's  hope 
and  the  secret  of  his  despair.  It  contains 
some  of  the  most  intimate  confidences  he 
ever  published.  He  here  shows  himself 
aghast  at  the  differences  of  so  many  men 
to  the  purpose  and  the  effect  of  life.  He 
sees  the  steps  of  history  thronged  with 
great  figures,  the  poet,  the  priest,  and  the 
artist,  bringing  down,  like  Moses  from  the 
Mount,  the  very  writing  of  God;  and  in 
the  face  of  this,  mankind  hurries  heedlessly 
and  helplessly  on  its  way,  raking  in  the 
dirt  and  straws  of  the  street,  with  the 
heavenly  crown  hanging  within  reach  of 
the  oblivious  hand.  His  own  failure  stares 
him  in  the  face. 

I  have  had  [he  writes]  what,  in  many  re- 
spects, I  boldly  call  the  misfortune,  to  set  my 
words  somewhat  prettily  together;  not  without 
a  foolish  vanity  in  the  poor  knack  I  had  of 
doing  so;  until  I  was  heavily  punished  for 


148  Ruskin 

this  pride,  by  finding  that  many  people  thought 
of  the  words  only  and  cared  nothing  for  the 
meaning. 

He  had  given,  he  says,  ten  of  his  best 
years  to  proclaiming  the  merits  of  Turner, 
and  to  sorting  and  making  available  for 
public  contemplation,  Turner's  work.  All 
this  had  been  regarded  with  entire  in- 
difference. 

I  spent  [he  writes]  the  ten  strongest  years 
of  my  life  (from  twenty  to  thirty)  in  en- 
deavouring to  show  the  excellence  of  the  work 
of  the  man  whom  I  believed,  and  rightly  be- 
lieved, to  be  the  greatest  painter  of  the  schools 
of  England  since  Reynolds.  I  had  then  per- 
fect faith  in  the  power  of  every  great  truth 
or  beauty  to  prevail  ultimately.  .  .  .  Fortu- 
nately or  unfortunately,  an  opportunity  of  per- 
fect trial  undeceived  me  at  once  and  for  ever. 

He  found  that  the  public  entirely  neg- 
lected the  drawings;  a  few  people  dawdled 
in  to  glance  at  them,  but  that  was  all.  His 
years  of  work  had  all  been  lost. 

For  that  I  did  not  so  much  care;  I  had,  at 
least,  learned  my  own  business  thoroughly. 


A  Study  in  Personality       149 

.  .  .  But  what  I  did  care  for  was  the — to 
me  frightful— discovery,  that  the  most  splen- 
did genius  in  the  arts  might  be  permitted  by 
Providence  to  labour  and  perish  uselessly,  .  .  . 
that  the  glory  of  it  was  perishable  as  well 
as  invisible.  .  .  .  That  was  the  first  mystery 
of  life  to  me. 

Of  course  we  are  all  at  liberty  to  think, 
and  if  we  think,  to  say,  that  this  is  all 
very  unreal  and  fantastic  and  emotional 
and  unbalanced.  What  an  outcry  about  a 
parcel  of  drawings,  scratches  of  ink  and 
blobs  of  colour!  No  one  can  object  to  the 
Englishman  who  prides  himself  on  his  com- 
mon-sense and  his  sturdy  welfare  calling 
it  all  moonshine  and  nonsense.  But  not 
by  common-sense  and  sturdy  welfare  does 
the  world  make  progress.  There  were 
plenty  of  good-humoured  Sadducees  who 
doubtless  felt  even  so  about  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  It  is  better  to  be  on  the  side 
of  the  heroes  and  of  the  saints;  and  even 
if  we  cannot  feel  with  them  or  see  into 
their  meaning,  we  can  at  least  abstain  from 
stoning  them  and  decrying  them.  I  do  not 


150  Ruskin 

myself  see  a  hundredth  part  of  what  Rus- 
kin saw  in  Turner.  I  think  many  of  his 
paintings  grotesque  and  impossible.  But 
still  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  victory  is 
rather  with  those  who  see  and  believe  and 
feel;  and  I  admire  with  all  my  heart  this 
awful  power,  which  prophets  have,  of 
raging  helplessly  against  the  hard  facts  of 
life,  of  knocking  themselves  blind  and  sense- 
less against  the  stupidities  and  brutalities 
of  human  nature.  I  can  at  least  regret  my 
own  indifference,  and  recognise  it  to  be  an 
ugly,  complacent,  short-sighted  thing.  I 
need  not  hold  it  up  like  a  shield  against 
the  darts  of  God,  or  make  it  into  an  image 
for  my  delight  and  worship;  and  there  is 
something  to  me  not  only  horribly  pathetic 
in  the  sight  of  Ruskin's  tears  and  cries,  but 
something  infinitely  uplifting  and  inspiring 
in  the  contemplation  of  them.  I  come  idly 
to  see  the  fantastic  struggles  of  some  de- 
mented person ;  and  I  discover  that  they 
are  the  irrepressible  agonies  of  a  martyr  in 
the  flame. 


IV 


IN  the  summer  of  1869  Ruskin  was  work- 
ing bis  hardest  in  Italy,  as  I  have  said. 
His  mother  was  very  anxious  about  him, 
and  implored  him  to  come  out  of  the  heat 
and  take  a  rest;  but  he  lingered  on.  On 
the  14th  of  August,  at  Verona,  he  was  pack- 
ing up  to  go  home,  having  finished  his  last 
sketch,  when  he  received  a  telegram  an- 
nouncing that  he  had  been  elected  to  the 
Slade  Professorship  of  Fine  Art  at  Oxford. 
"  Which  will  give  me,"  he  wrote  to  his 
mother,  "  as  much  power  as  I  can  well  use 
— and  would  have  given  pleasure  to  my  poor 
father — and  therefore  to  me — once." 

It   gave   him,   no   doubt,   more  pleasure 
than  he  knew.     It  was  not  a  question  of 
151 


152  Ruskin 

gratified  ambition.  He  was  quite  indif- 
ferent to  money  and  station;  but  it  was 
a  sign  that  there  were  men  of  weight  and 
sense  who  believed  in  him  and  his  work; 
it  gave  him  an  accredited  position,  and 
opened  a  door  to  him.  He  would  be  able 
to  affect,  by  direct  teaching  and  personal 
contact,  the  minds  of  the  rising  generation, 
at  their  most  generous  and  enthusiastic 
stage;  and  Oxford  too  was  very  dear  to 
him;  he  had  fallen,  as  all  Oxford  men  do 
— more  I  think  than  Cambridge  men — un- 
der the  incomparable  and  indefinable  charm 
of  that  home  of  lost  causes  and  mediaeval 
dreams.  Not  that  this  is  all  that  Oxford 
stands  for;  but  it  has  the  particular  touch 
of  idealism  about  it,  such  as  surrounds  the 
dethroned  monarch  and  the  exiled  claim- 
ant, pursuing  with  Quixotic  devotion  some 
unrealisable  vision.  To  what  extent  Rus- 
kin meant  to  lecture  upon  Art  cannot  be 
stated.  He  had  for  some  years  been  writ- 
ing about  half-a-dozen  lectures  a  year,  which 
filled  an  annual  volume.  Now  only  twelve 


A  Study  in  Personality       153 

annual  lectures  were  required  of  him.  But 
he  planned,  as  he  always  did,  a  gigantic 
scheme  of  art-teaching,  which  he  could  not 
have  carried  out  if  he  had  lectured  daily 
for  a  dozen  years.  He  proposed  to  revise 
the  whole  of  his  theory  of  art,  and  to  write 
lectures  which  should  begin  with  first 
principles  and  ramify  into  every  technical 
branch  of  art,  to  conclude  with  an  encyclo- 
paedic history  of  art  in  general.  But  he 
did  not  intend  to  drop  any  of  his  other 
schemes.  The  result  was  that  his  work 
finally  and  completely  broke  down  both  his 
health  and  his  mental  powers.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  he  was  now  a  man  of 
fifty,  conscious  of  failure,  wrestling  with 
intense  irritation  at  the  general  drift  of 
human  society.  He  had  six  months  before 
his  work  began.  Strained  and  overworked 
as  he  was,  he  set  to.  Corpus  Christi  Col- 
lege made  him  an  Honorary  Fellow,  and 
gave  him  a  set  of  rooms;  and  on  8th  Feb- 
ruary, 1870,  he  appeared  in  his  lecture 
room  to  deliver  his  inaugural  address. 


154  Ruskin 

The  most  extraordinary  scene  followed. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  in  many 
ways  the  man  of  the  hour.  Every  one  knew 
his  brilliant  and  suggestive  books,  and  his 
schemes — wild  as  they  were  thought — of 
social  reform.  His  extraordinary  charm  of 
personality,  which  soaked  into  all  his  writ- 
ings and  gave  his  readers  a  sense  of  in- 
timate and  individual  contact  with  a  man 
of  genius;  his  wealth,  and  the  use  he  had 
made  of  it;  his  amazing  vehemence  of 
speech,  his  reckless  daring  of  thought,  had 
all  created  a  curiosity  about  him  of  which 
he  was  hardly  conscious.  The  place  was 
packed  an  hour  before;  the  ante-rooms  and 
passages  were  blocked;  there  was  a  voci- 
ferous and  disappointed  crowd  in  the  street. 

After  a  hurried  conference,  a  friend 
pushed  his  way  to  the  desk,  and  announced 
that  the  meeting  would  adjourn  to  the  Shel- 
donian  Theatre.  The  great  man,  slim  and 
bent,  with  his  piercing  blue  eyes,  under 
shaggy  eyebrows,  his  long  brown  hair,  his 
thin  whiskers,  his  grim  mouth,  stepped  to 


A  Study  in  Personality       155 

the  rostrum.  His  dress  was  even  then  old- 
fashioned.  A  stiff  blue  frock-coat  with  a 
light  waistcoat  and  trousers;  long  loose 
linen  cuffs;  high  collars  of  the  Gladstone 
type;  a  bright  blue  stock  tie,  like  an  early 
Victorian  statesman;  a  silk  gown  which 
he  briskly  discarded,  to  leave  him  free  to 
gesticulate,  and  the  velvet  cap  of  a  gentle- 
man-commoner. Such  was  the  figure  that 
came  forward.  He  had  few  gifts  of  formal 
delivery.  He  began  by  reading  a  very  ela- 
borate passage  in  a  very  artificial  cadence. 
Then  he  would  break  off,  and  begin  to  in- 
terpolate and  extemporise  with  immense 
vivacity  and  free  gestures.  Sometimes  he 
was  dramatic  in  action.  In  his  lecture  on 
birds,  he  strode  about  like  a  rook,  he 
swooped  like  a  swallow.  But  grotesque  as 
the  performance  easily  might  have  been,  it 
carried  every  one  away  by  its  eagerness 
and  sincerity.  And  his  glance  was  of  the 
magnetic  and  arresting  sort.  Some  of  his 
hearers  confessed  to  the  indescribable  sen- 
sation, like  the  kindling  of  the  soul,  which 


156  Ruskin 

fell  on  them  if  his  eyes  seemed  for  a 
moment  to  dwell  upon  them. 

Whatever  Ruskin  felt,  it  was  clear  to 
him  from  that  moment  that  at  Oxford,  at 
all  events,  he  could  get  a  hearing,  and  he 
hurled  himself  into  his  work  with  intense 
enthusiasm.  He  started  a  drawing-school 
and  endowed  it.  He  showered  down  gifts 
on  the  place,  pictures,  casts,  engravings. 
He  gave  endless  parties  and  receptions. 
He  even  enlisted  a  party  of  undergraduates 
to  help  in  an  experiment  of  road-making 
up  at  Hinksey.  The  road  was  made,  and 
was  infamously  inadequate  for  all  pur- 
poses of  locomotion.  And  so  the  first  years 
sped  busily  away. 

In  letters  written  in  1871  and  1872  to 
his  friend  Norton,  he  describes  his  lecture 
work : 

I  am  always  unhappy,  and  see  no  good  in 
saying  so.  But  I  am  settling  to  my  work 
here, — recklessly, — to  do  my  best  with  it,  feel- 
ing quite  that  it  is  talking  at  hazard,  for  what 
chance  good  may  come.  But  I  attend  regu- 


A  Study  in  Personality       157 

larly  in  the  schools  as  mere  drawing-master, 
and  the  men  begin  to  come  one  by  one — about 
fifteen  or  twenty  already; — several  worth  hav- 
ing as  pupils  in  any  way,  being  of  temper  to 
make  good  growth  of. 

And  again: 

I  am,  as  usual,  unusually  busy.  When  I 
get  fairly  into  my  lecture  work  at  Oxford,  I 
always  find  that  the  lecture  would  come  better 
some  other  way,  just  before  it  is  given,  and 
so  work  hand  to  mouth. 

Perhaps  I  may  mention  here  a  remark- 
able satire  which  was  written  at  the  end 
of  the  seventies  by  a  young  Oxford  man 
who  had  just  taken  his  degree,  who  has 
since  become  famous  in  literature, — Mr.  W. 
H.  Mallock. 

The  book  is  an  account  of  a  party  of 
people  who  meet  for  a  week-end  visit  at 
a  country-house,  and  discuss  all  sorts  of 
problems  in  life  and  art.  Some  of  the  most 
famous  men  of  the  day,  such  as  Huxley, 
Matthew  Arnold,  Jowett,  and  Pater  are 
here  depicted  with  inimitable  ingenuity  and 
wit.  Many  of  Mr.  Mallock's  happiest 


158  Ruskin 

effects  in  the  book  are  produced  by  intro- 
ducing actual  words  or  sentiments  of  these 
great  men  in  a  grotesque  context  and  with 
absurd  applications.  Many  of  them  were 
probably  hardly  known  to  the  author  at 
all;  but  Mr.  Mallock  had  known  and  ob- 
served Ruskin  at  Oxford;  and  Mr.  Her- 
bert, under  which  name  Ruskin  appears,  is 
undoubtedly  the  hero  of  the  book.  Porten- 
tous as  the  paradoxes  put  in  his  mouth 
are,  extravagant  as  the  emotions  are  which 
he  is  made  to  express,  though  the  sentiment 
is  fantastic  and  hyperbolical,  yet  one  feels 
that  he  is  somehow  pursued  through  the 
book  by  the  emotions  of  the  author,  and 
that  he  alone  is  allowed  to  appear  sincere 
and  impressive.  I  would  recommend  any 
one  who  is  interested  in  the  striking  fig- 
ures of  the  time  and  their  relation  to  each 
other's  thought,  to  read  the  book  carefully. 
One  can  often  complete  the  picture  of  a 
man  by  a  contemporary  caricature  in  a 
way  in  which  one  cannot  complete  it  by 
subsequent  panegyrics,  however  reverential. 


A  Study  in  Personality       159 

2 

I  must  now  return  to  other  memorable 
enterprises  which  all  date  from  these  years 
of  Oxford  activity.  It  was  now  that  Bus- 
kin began  to  issue  what  is  the  most  hetero- 
geneous and  yet  characteristic  book  that 
ever  came  from  his  pen,  Fors  Clavigera.  I 
hardly  dare  to  recommend  it  to  you;  and 
yet  any  one  who  desires  to  see  the  inner- 
most side  of  Ruskin's  heart  and  mind,  must 
make  up  his  mind  to  wade  through  the 
great  volumes. 

Let  me  attempt  to  describe  the  indescrib- 
able. Fors  Clavigera  was  a  series  of 
letters  addressed  to  the  workers  of  Eng- 
land, issued  in  monthly  parts.  It  ran  at 
last  into  eight  volumes.  The  title  is  what 
is  called  in  Alice  in  Wonderland  a  port- 
manteau-word, crammed  with  symbolism. 
Fors  stood  at  once  for  destiny  and  courage ; 
Clavigera  means  either  club-bearing,  or 
nail-bearing,  or  key-bearing.  The  Club  was 
a  symbol  of  action,  the  Nail  of  fate,  and 


160  Ruskin 

the  Key  was  the  key  of  heavenly  mystery. 
All  this  must  be  borne  in  mind.  If  one 
asks  what  it  was  about,  I  can  only  reply 
in  the  words  of  Aristophanes:  xepl  aou,  xepl 
IjxoO,  xepl  axavTWV  xpay^aTWV, —  about  you, 
about  me,  about  everything  in  the  world; 
but  the  general  motive  of  the  book  is  the 
redressing  of  social  misery  and  collective 
poverty. 

For  my  own  part  [he  says  in  the  first  letter], 
I  will  put  up  with  this  state  of  things,  pas- 
sively, not  an  hour  longer.  I  am  not  an  un- 
selfish person,  nor  an  Evangelical  one;  I  have 
no  particular  pleasure  in  doing  good;  neither 
do  I  dislike  doing  it  so  much  as  to  expect  to 
be  rewarded  for  it  in  another  world.  But  I 
simply  cannot  paint,  nor  read,  nor  look  at 
minerals,  nor  do  anything  else  that  I  like, 
.  .  .  because  of  the  misery  that  I  know  of, 
and  see  signs  of,  where  I  know  it  not,  which 
no  imagination  can  interpret  too  bitterly. 

He  preached  a  communism  of  wealth  and 
joy,  and  took  up  his  parable  against  lux- 
ury and  selfishness,  idle  accumulation  and 
tyrannical  oppression.  The  tide  of  elo- 


A  Study  in  Personality       161 

quence  goes  rolling  on,  like  a  fiery  flow  of 
lava,  full  of  endless  digressions  into  auto- 
biography and  art,  into  poetry  and  legend 
and  romance;  now  telling  the  life-story  of 
a  hero  like  Walter  Scott,  now  drifting  into 
mysticism,  now  designing  a  new  coinage, 
passing  from  a  plan  for  sub-alpine  reser- 
voirs to  a  description  of  Carpaccio's  Sleep- 
ing Princess.  Sometimes  there  is  a  long 
extract  from  Marmontel  or  Addison's  Spec- 
tator; and  it  is  all  full  of  that  melancholy 
humour,  that  caressing  fondness,  that  mov- 
ing pathos,  that  intense  sadness  that  made 
Kuskin  the  delight  of  the  world,  and  yet 
drove  him  raging  into  the  wilderness.  One 
may  be  bored  by  Fors,  one  may  lose  one's 
way  in  it,  one  may  fall  into  hopeless  irrita- 
tion at  the  childish  waywardness,  the  un- 
practical inconsequence  of  the  book.  But 
there  is  no  book  quite  like  it  in  the  world, 
because  it  is  looking  straight  down  into 
the  very  current  of  a  great  and,  alas,  dis- 
ordered mind. 

Few    men    can    ever    have    thought    so 


1 62  Ruskin 

rapidy,  so  intensely,  with  such  momentary 
concentration  and  yet  with  such  wild  dif- 
fuseness  as  Ruskin;  and  fewer  still  have 
the  power  of  translating  the  vague  dreams 
and  reveries  of  thought  into  such  absolutely 
limpid  and  beautiful  words.  So  that  it  is 
like  standing  by  a  clear  mountain  stream, 
and  seeing,  through  its  swift  ripples  and 
amber  curves,  the  very  pebbles  over  which  it 
flows  and  the  ribbons  of  trailing  water- 
weed,  all  transfigured  and  glorified  by  the 
magical  enchantment  of  art. 

And  then  too,  as  Fors  went  on,  Kuskin 
took  to  printing  in  it  some  of  the  letters 
he  received,  both  of  sympathisers  and  op- 
ponents. He  was  strangely  candid  about 
the  latter,  and  included  letters  of  the  most 
personal  and  even  abusive  kind;  but  as  he 
often  also  printed  his  own  replies,  and  as 
he  was  a  master  of  the  art  of  humorous 
invective,  the  impression  given  was  as  a 
rule  favourable  to  himself.  Here  is  a  good 
instance.  An  impertinent  critic  wrote  to 
him,  and  in  the  course  of  the  letter  said: 


A  Study  in  Personality       163 

Since  you  disparage  so  much  iron  and  its 
manufacture,  may  it  be  asked  how  your  books 
are  printed,  and  how  is  their  paper  made? 
Probably  you  are  aware  that  both  printing 
and  paper-making  machines  are  made  of  that 
material. 

Kuskin  replied: 

SIR. — I  am  indeed  aware  that  printing  and 
paper-making  machines  are  made  of  iron.  I 
am  aware  also,  which  you  perhaps  are  not, 
that  ploughshares  and  knives  and  forks  are. 
And  I  am  aware,  which  you  certainly  are  not, 
that  I  am  writing  with  an  iron  pen.  And  you 
will  find  in  Fors  Clavlgera,  and  in  all  my  other 
writings,  which  you  may  have  done  me  the 
honour  to  read,  that  my  statement  is  that 
things  which  have  to  do  the  work  of  iron 
should  be  made  of  iron,  and  things  which  have 
to  do  the  work  of  wood  should  be  made  of 
wood;  but  that  (for  instance)  hearts  should 
not  be  made  of  iron,  nor  heads  of  wood — 
and  this  last  statement  you  may  wisely  con- 
sider when  next  it  enters  into  yours  to  ask 
questions. 

Fors  Clavigera  is  very  rich  in  incidental 
judgments  and  characterisations;  indeed  it 
is  this  that  gives  it  its  chief  value.  The 


164  Ruskin 

matter  of  it  is  so  discursive,  that  at  times 
it  is  only  rescued  from  tediousness  by  its 
extreme  intensity  of  thought  and  its  purity 
of  utterance.  One  may  wish  that  Kuskin 
could  have  applied  himself  more  coherently 
to  definite  points,  but  upon  reflection  one 
is  glad  to  leave  the  method  entirely  in  his 
own  hands.  In  the  first  place,  when  he 
treated  a  subject  allegorically,  he  was  ac- 
customed to  subdivide  his  material  under 
very  elaborate  headings.  I  think  that  this 
was  one  of  the  things  that  recommended 
his  earlier  writings  to  the  stolid  British 
mind.  The  British  mind  cares  much  less 
about  ideas  than  about  the  arrangement  of 
ideas.  It  has  a  pathetic  belief  in  the  value 
of  correct  information,  and  it  will  attempt 
to  assimiliate  an  idea  which  is  communi- 
cated in  the  guise  of  headings  and  subdi- 
visions, because  it  believes  that  the  subject 
is  being  treated  seriously,  and  that  it  is 
somehow  or  other  getting  cash  value  for 
its  money.  It  is  more  concerned,  for  in- 
stance, to  know  that  the  gifts  of  the  spirit 


A  Study  in  Personality       165 

are  sevenfold,  and  that  there  are  seven 
deadly  sins,  than  to  realise  the  nature  of 
sin  and  of  grace.  But  Ruskin's  headings 
are  very  misleading.  They  not  only  do  not 
cover  the  whole  ground,  but  they  trespass 
on  each  other's  ground.  There  are  plenty 
of  cases  where  Ruskin  will  divide  a  subject 
into  heads,  and  not  only  will  he  omit  ob- 
vious subdivisions,  but  four  or  five  of  his 
headings  will  prove  to  be  almost  identical. 
It  is  an  ironical  proof  of  the  turn  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  reader  for  the  book-keeping 
theory  of  literature,  that  it  accepted  Rus- 
kin's art-teaching,  much  of  which  was 
fantastic  and  inaccurate,  because  it  was 
conveyed  under  the  form  of  subdivisions. 
Whereas  when  he  became  painfully  and 
feverishly  in  earnest,  and  wrote  as  he  felt, 
the  public  became  unable  to  follow  his  argu- 
ment, and  thought  it  vague  and  disjointed. 

Moreover,  it  seems  to  me  that  Ruskin's 
effect  on  the  world  was  the  effect  of  a 
personality  and  not  the  effect  of  a  reasoned 
philosophy;  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  one 


1 66  Ruskin 

gets  far  nearer  to  the  mind  of  Ruskin  and 
to  his  ideas  in  Fors  than  one  ever  does  in 
Modern  Painters.  Much  of  Modern  Paint- 
ers consists  of  brilliant  attractive  thoughts, 
born  of  the  intellect  rather  than  of  the 
heart,  which  came  lightly  and  fancifully, 
and  were  swiftly  and  gracefully  set  down. 
But  in  Fors  it  is  as  though  one  saw  some 
awful  spiritual  combat  proceeding,  like  the 
wrestling  of  Jacob  by  night  with  the  angel 
at  Penuel,  whose  form  he  could  not  see  and 
whose  nature  he  could  not  guess,  whether 
he  meant  to  test  his  strength,  or  to  over- 
come him  and  leave  him  maimed.  And  just 
as  the  angel,  though  he  was  an  angel  of 
light,  made  the  sinew  of  the  halting  thigh 
shrink  at  his  fiery  touch,  so  Ruskin  too 
emerged  from  the  conflict  a  shattered  man ; 
and  to  myself,  I  will  frankly  confess,  it  is 
just  this  heart-breaking  conflict,  this  appall- 
ing struggle  with  mighty  thoughts  and  dread- 
ful fears,  that  made  at  once  the  tragedy  and 
the  glory  of  Ruskin's  life,  because  it  broke 
his  pride  and  humbled  his  complacency, 


A  Study  in  Personality        167 

and  crowned  him  with  the  hero's  crown. 
For  let  me  say  once  and  for  all,  that  under 
all  his  irony  and  humour,  under  his  un- 
balanced vehemence  and  his  no  less  unbal- 
anced sorrow,  Kuskin's  work,  if  not  severely 
logical,  was  neither  eccentric  nor  irrespon- 
sible. Its  soundness,  its  ultimate  sanity, 
was  confirmed  and  not  depreciated  by 
subsequent  events. 

But  in  spite  of  all  this  it  must  be  frankly 
confessed  that  Fors  is  a  difficult  work  to 
comprehend.  Kuskin  seems  at  times  to  be 
following  no  definite  line  of  thought;  yet 
one  of  the  delights  of  it  is  the  great  variety 
of  true  and  beautiful  judgments  on  all  sorts 
of  points  connected  with  art  and  literature 
and  morality.  Let  me  give  a  single  extract, 
where  he  is  dealing  with  the  moral  novelists 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  a  specimen 
of  characterisation  which  is  as  suggestive 
and  as  true  as  it  is  bold  and  humorous. 

Miss  Edgeworth  [he  says]  made  her  moral- 
ity so  impertinent  that,  since  her  time,  it  has 
only  been  with  fear  and  trembling  that  any 


i68  Ruskin 

good  novelist  has  ventured  to  show  the  slight- 
est bias  in  favour  of  the  Ten  Commandments. 
Scott  made  his  romance  so  ridiculous,  that, 
since  his  day,  one  can't  help  fancying  helmets 
were  always  pasteboard  and  horses  were  al- 
ways hobby.  Dickens  made  everybody  laugh, 
or  cry,  so  that  they  could  not  go  about  their 
business  till  they  had  got  their  faces  in 
wrinkles;  and  Thackeray  settled  like  a  meat- 
fly on  whatever  one  had  got  for  dinner,  and 
made  one  sick  of  it. 


I  don't  say  that  this  is  a  fair  or  a  gen- 
erous or  a  complete  criticism.  But  it  is 
hideously  clever,  and  touches  the  weak- 
nesses of  the  mighty  with  a  sure  hand.  Yet 
by  this  kind  of  levity  he  lost  friends,  who 
thought  that  he  could  not  be  in  earnest 
when  he  trifled  with  their  cherished  beliefs ; 
though  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  human 
being  can  have  overlooked  the  mortal  and 
deadly  earnestness  that  runs  through  the 
whole;  and  if  Ruskin  did  lose  a  few  pre- 
cisians and  unimaginative  persons  at  the 
time,  he  gained  and  will  gain  a  host  of 
admirers  and  lovers  by  his  gay  frankness, 


A  Study  in  Personality        169 
and   the   sense   of   charming  vivacity   that 


runs  through  the  book. 


Ruskin  had,  before  the  date  of  which  I 
am  speaking,  made  one  or  two  attempts  to 
put  his  principles  into  practical  shape.  He 
had  been  left  a  few  small  houses  in  Mary- 
lebone  by  his  father,  and  he  had  put  them 
in  charge  of  a  lady-pupil  of  his,  Miss 
Octavia  Hill,  whose  name  has  since  be- 
become  famous  as  a  philanthropic  worker  on 
similar  lines.  His  point  was  that  a  good 
landlord  could,  if  he  abjured  high  profits, 
give  some  fixity  of  tenure,  make  the  houses 
comfortable,  and  provide  a  little  ground  for 
recreation.  It  is  generally  calculated  that 
such  property  should  bring  in,  owing  to  its 
insecurity  as  an  investment,  at  least  10 
per  cent.  But  Ruskin  took  5  per  cent., 
and  spent  the  margin  on  improvements.  At 
this  time  he  had  not  developed  his  later 
heresies  about  the  sinfulness  of  all  usury. 
I  will  not  go  into  that  question,  because  it 


170  Ruskin 

is  a  complicated  one,  and  because  Rus- 
kin— as  he  often  did — adopted  a  principle 
upon  insufficient  and  inadequate  grounds. 
He  did  not  reflect  that  all  interest  is  ulti- 
mately due  to  the  multiplying  power  and 
the  stored  natural  products  of  the  earth, 
and  that  the  basis  of  all  increment  is  that 
you  can  dig  things  like  coal  out  of  the 
earth  on  the  one  hand,  by  which  the  avail- 
able commodities  of  the  earth  are  increased, 
and  that  if  you  sow  a  grain  of  wheat,  a 
dozen  grains  are  the  result.  The  question 
is  not  of  course  as  simple  as  that;  but  while 
it  may  be  contended  that  all  capital  and 
all  increment  alike  are  the  property  of  the 
community,  and  ought  not  to  be  appro- 
priated by  any  one  individual,  that  is  not 
the  same  thing  as  saying  that  all  interest 
on  capital  received  by  private  persons  is 
wrong. 

Kuskin  had  a  very  painful  correspond- 
ence with  Miss  Octavia  Hill  at  a  later 
date,  which  is  all  printed  in  Fors.  Some 
criticisms  wrhich  she  had  made  on  his  un- 


A  Study  in  Personality        171 

practical  grasp  of  business  vexed  him,  and  he 
accused  her  of  treachery,  and  of  discourag- 
ing would-be  adherents.  She  amply  vindi- 
cated herself;  but  the  gap  was  not  bridged, 
though  he  ultimately  parted  with  the 
whole  of  his  small  house  property  to  Miss 
Hill,  and  ten  years  later  frankly  admitted 
his  error.  He  tried  too  the  experiment  of 
a  small  tea-and-coffee  shop,  with  a  fantastic 
care  of  details,  such  as  the  painted  sign 
and  the  old  china  jars  in  the  window.  The 
business  paid  its  expenses  and  produced  a 
fair  profit.  But  it  is  difficult  to  say  how 
much  of  this  was  due  to  Ruskin's  pres- 
tige. Tolstoy,  the  Russian  novelist,  had  a 
sharp  lesson  in  this  respect,  when  he  found 
that  a  pair  of  very  indifferent  shoes,  which 
he  made  in  order  that  he  might  earn  a  wage 
by  manual  work,  were  kept  under  a  glass 
case  as  curiosities  to  be  shown  to  visitors. 
And  then  too  Ruskin  made  an  experiment 
about  his  books.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  his  fortune  was  melting  away  like 
snow  in  a  thaw.  But  he  hated  bad  paper 


172  Ruskin 

and  bad  print,  he  could  not  bear  the  sys- 
tem of  discounts  and  trade  commissions,  so 
he  withdrew  his  earlier  works  from  circula- 
tion, and  made  it  as  inconvenient  as  pos- 
sible for  every  one  concerned  to  get  the 
books,  and  as  difficult  as  possible  for  any 
incidental  profit  to  be  made  out  of  them. 
But  the  public  has  the  art  of  scenting  out 
and  getting  what  it  wants;  and  in  spite  of 
his  precautions  the  books  were  bought— 
indeed  the  profits  which  Ruskin  received 
on  his  books  gave  him  an  income,  when  all 
his  fortune  was  gone,  of  something  like 
£4000  a  year;  so  that  he  was  a  rich  man 
to  the  end  of  his  days.  But  it  does  not  by 
any  means  follow  that  it  was  a  fair  trad- 
ing arrangement;  indeed,  it  was  only  made 
possible  by  his  increasing  popularity,  and 
cannot  be  cited  as  an  economic  precedent.  , 
And  then  at  last  he  made  his  great  ex- 
periment. He  began  in  1871  to  ask  for 
definite  adherents  to  help  him  in  carry- 
ing his  ideas  to  practice.  His  aim  was  to 
fight  the  spirit  of  commercialism,  which 


A  Study  in  Personality       173 

he  believed  was  at  the  root  of  half  the  pre- 
valent evils.  He  wanted  men  and  women 
to  join  with  him  in  a  serious  attempt  to 
live  a  simple  life — he  never  preached  or 
practised  asceticism  in  any  form — to  intro- 
duce higher  aims  and  a  taste  for  purer 
pleasures.  He  thought  that  the  reclaiming 
of  waste  land  might  give  employment  and 
healthy  work.  He  did  not  believe  that  po- 
litical agitation  would  do  anything;  but 
thought  that  if  all  those  who  had  held  the 
same  sort  of  creed  as  himself  and  owned 
the  same  hopes,  would  come  out  of  their 
conventional  position  in  a  base  and  hide- 
bound society,  the  body  thus  created  would 
become  a  force  which  would  have  to  be 
reckoned  with.  His  idea  was  a  Socialistic 
one,  that  capital,  the  means  and  material 
of  labour,  should  be  in  the  hands  of  Gov- 
ernment— that  is  in  a  central  body  to  whom 
authority  was  to  be  delegated;  and  so  he 
founded  a  company  or  Guild,  the  Guild  of 
St.  George,  which  was  to  hold  property  for 
the  benefit  of  its  members.  Every  member 


174  Ruskin 

was  to  assent  to  a  comprehensive  little 
creed,  and  to  do  some  sort  of  work  for  his 
living;  to  obey  the  authority  of  the  officers 
of  the  Guild,  and  to  contribute  a  tithe  of  his 
income  to  a  central  fund.  The  fund  was 
to  buy  land  for  the  members  to  cultivate ;  to 
have  a  common  store  of  valuable  property; 
to  prefer  manual  labour  to  machinery;  to 
use  wind  and  water  power  for  mills  and 
factories,  not  steam;  to  give  fair  wages,  to 
found  museums,  to  train  refined  taste,  and 
to  give  healthy  opportunities  of  recreation. 
He  amused  himself  with  all  sorts  of  de- 
tailed enactments,  pretty  absurd  fancies, 
which  brought  discredit  on  the  scheme. 
Thus  no  wine  was  to  be  drunk  which  was 
not  ten  years  old;  a  new  coinage  was  to 
be  designed ;  the  members  wyere  to  wear  cos- 
tumes indicative  of  their  rank  and  occupa- 
tion, and  to  wear  jewels  which  were  to  be 
uncut,  except  agates. 

Then  he  selected  a  comprehensive  little 
library  to  include  all  that  he  thought  it 
good  for  a  man  to  read;  such  books  as  the 


A  Study  in  Personality       175 

Economicus  of  Xenophon,  for  a  manual  of 
household  life,  and  Gotthelfs  Ulric  the 
Farmer,,  from  a  French  version  which  he 
loved,  because  his  father  had  been  used  to 
read  it  alone  to  him  as  a  boy. 

He  began  by  giving  the  Guild  a  tenth  of 
his  fortune,  which  was  still  a  large  one. 
The  tithe  came  to  £7000,  and  in  three  years 
the  rest  of  the  civilised  world  contributed 
£236.  He  took  a  cottage  near  Sheffield, 
and  stored  some  fine  things  there,  pictures 
and  minerals.  The  first  land  held  by  the 
Guild  was  a  farm  of  thirteen  acres  at 
Abbeydale,  near  Sheffield,  which  was  bought 
by  the  Guild  and  taken  over  by  a  knot  of 
enthusiasts,  who  knew  nothing  of  farming, 
but  were  earning  a  living  in  other  ways. 
It  was  a  ludicrous  failure.  They  employed 
a  bailiff,  who  absorbed  the  profits.  The 
land,  bought  at  nearly  £200  an  acre,  proved 
worthless :  it  became  a  tea-garden,  and  Rus- 
kin  was  roundly  abused  for  the  failure. 
Beside  this,  the  Guild  had  a  cottage  at 
Scarborough,  two  acres  of  moorland  at 


1 76  Ruskin 

Barmouth,  and  a  wood  in  Worcestershire. 
One  or  two  local  industries  were  started  in 
the  Isle  of  Man  and  in  the  Lakes,  but  the 
whole  experiment  was  a  failure,  and  not 
even  a  failure  of  the  colossal  and  tragic 
kind,  but  a  petty  and  dismal  failure,  so 
that  one  hardly  knows  whether  to  laugh  or 
cry  over  it  all,  at  its  vast  designs  and 
beautiful  outlines,  and  its  very  scrappy  and 
grotesque  performances. 

We  may  ask  why  a  man  whose  genius 
was  so  great,  whose  view  of  the  world  was 
so  noble,  whose  principles  were  so  just  and 
in  many  ways  so  sensible,  and  whose  in- 
fluence was  so  potent,  should  have  had  to 
suffer  this  ghastly  fiasco?  Well,  in  the  first 
place  Kuskin  mistook  his  powers  and  his 
opportunity.  A  prophet  must  be  content 
to  be  a  prophet.  He  must  not  claim  a 
close  hold  over  details — those  must  grow 
up  naturally  out  of  his  ideas  when  they 
are  accepted.  Many  of  Ruskin's  ideas  are 
taking  shape  and  working  themselves  out 
on  practical  lines.  But  in  addition  to  his 


A  Study  in  Personality       177 

ideas  it  must  be  remembered  that  be  bad 
in  one  sense  a  practical  mind,  in  tbat  be 
loved  precision  of  detail  in  everything,  and 
desired  concrete  expression  of  bis  dreams. 
But  be  did  not  fully  grasp  the  principles  of 
economics,  and  be  did  not  understand  hu- 
man nature.  He  was  lacking  in  imagina- 
tive sympathy.  He  could  not  believe  that 
there  were  plenty  of  robust  sensible  and 
virtuous  people  in  the  world  who  did  not 
value  art  at  a  pin's  bead,  and  who  desired 
to  be  comfortable  in  a  commonplace  way. 
One  may  wish  that  human  nature  were  dif- 
ferent; one  may  love  great  ideas,  and  de- 
sire peace  and  beauty  to  prevail,  and  yet 
grasp  the  fact  that  all  human  beings  are 
not  built  on  the  same  lines.  All  the  charm- 
ing details  of  Ruskin's  Utopia  were  simply 
an  expression  of  his  own  pure  and  dainty 
preferences,  and  be  made  the  mistake  of 
wishing  to  impose  them  upon  others,  or 
rather  of  believing  tbat  people  only  required 
to  be  told  what  was  beautiful  to  desire  it. 
It  was  this  intense  and  stubborn  dogma- 


1 78  Ruskin 

tism,  this  sense  of  Tightness  in  his  own 
tastes  and  preferences,  that  was  at  the  root 
of  all  his  bitter  failures.  By  his  glowing 
words  and  by  his  own  pure  example  he  was 
sowing  seed  fast.  But  he  desired  to  see 
an  immediate  harvest,  and  this  the  prophet 
cannot  hope  for — or  if  he  does  hope  for 
it,  he  is  destined  to  horrible  disappointment. 
To  me  the  details  of  Kuskin's  schemes  are 
infinitely  charming  and  pathetic;  but  I 
should  resent  any  compulsion  in  such  a 
matter,  while  the  whole  situation  seems  to 
me  as  unutterably  tragic  as  any  situation 
I  know  in  literature  or  life.  This  sensitive, 
high-minded,  enthusiastic  man,  lashing  him- 
self into  frenzy  at  the  sight  of  the  brute 
forces  of  human  stupidity  and  baseness,  in 
all  their  awful  strength  and  solidity,  find- 
ing that  human  beings  would  neither  be 
charmed  nor  caressed  nor  laughed  nor 
scolded  into  agreement,  is  to  me  one  of  the 
most  august  and  pathetic  figures  that  it  is 
possible  to  conceive — beyond  the  reach  in- 
deed of  human  imagination.  One  is  thrilled 


A  Study  in  Personality       179 

and  awed  and  harrowed  by  the  tragedies  of 
Shakespeare  or  the  novels  of  Tolstoy.  But 
the  whole  of  Ruskin's  works  and  letters  are 
like  a  gigantic  romance,  with  the  difference 
that,  instead  of  being  conditioned  by  the 
imagination  of  a  novelist,  they  are  a  vol- 
ume straight  from  the  awful  hand  of  God, 
where  no  obstacles  are  smoothed  away  by 
happy  coincidences,  no  wrongs  conveniently 
righted,  but  where  one  can  see  the  fierce 
conflict  of  elemental  forces  with  a  single 
soul,  as  noble,  as  perceptive,  as  subtle,  as 
delicate  as  any  spirit  which  was  ever  linked 
to  a  human  frame,  fighting  single-handed, 
in  sorrow  and  despair,  against  all  the  harsh 
and  strong  facts  of  life — not  only  facts  that 
wreck  lives  and  darken  homes,  but  the  very 
facts  that  seem  to  make  for  contentment 
and  delight.  It  is  the  dreadful  bewilder- 
ment that  comes  of  trying  to  see  where 
and  what  God  really  is,  and  on  which  side 
He  is  fighting,  that  makes  the  tragedy  of 
the  situation;  and  though  the  surface  may 
be  rippled  by  humour  and  absurdity,  yet 


i8o  Ruskin 

the  scene,  if  one  views  it  fairly,  is  like  the 
picture  drawn  by  Homer  of  Charybdis — 
the  swiftly  running  tide,  the  shudder  of  the 
moving  deeps,  till  in  the  spin  and  eddy  of 
the  roaring  race,  the  depth  is  laid  bare, 
and  the  earth  herself  appears,  black  with 
sand. 


And  here  I  will  relate  in  a  few  words 
what  was  probably  the  central  fact  in  Rus- 
kin's  life — a  love  that  transformed  itself 
from  a  paternal  affection  into  a  consuming 
passion;  a  love  which  was  for  years  the 
mainspring  and  comfort  of  his  life,  and 
the  frustration  of  which  not  only  cost  him 
the  deepest  of  all  the  sorrows  he  had  to 
endure,  but  caused  the  strain  under  which 
his  overburdened  mind  gave  way.  One 
must  not  look  too  closely  into  an  episode 
like  this;  but  it  was  to  such  an  extent  the 
pivot  of  his  life,  it  explained  so  much,  it 
accounted  for  so  much,  that  it  must  be 
known  and  it  must  be  indicated. 


A  Study  in  Personality       181 

It  was  in  1858  that  it  began.  It  was  at 
Rheinfelden,  in  that  year,  that  on  a  Sun- 
day walk  he  gathered  a  purple  orchis  by 
the  roadside,  and  on  coming  home  took 
pencil  in  hand  to  sketch  it.  A  trivial  in- 
cident enough!  But  it  seems  to  have 
brought  home  to  him  the  ugly  rigidity  and 
absurdity  of  his  Sabbatarian  training;  and 
he  dated  from  that  incident  a  train  of 
thought  which  led  to  his  abjuring  his  old 
Evangelical  beliefs.  A  Sunday  at  Turin 
a  few  weeks  later,  when  he  attended  a  little 
Protestant  chapel  of  Waldensians,  put  the 
finishing  touch.  He  heard  the  grim  Puri- 
tan doctrines  of  Calvinism  and  Predestin- 
arianism  preached  with  a  fierce  unction, 
and  the  horror  of  it  all  came  suddenly  home 
to  him.  He  left  the  chapel  converted  "  in- 
side out,"  as  he  said.  When  he  reached 
home  a  few  days  later,  in  a  very  despond- 
ent frame  of  mind,  he  received  a  letter  from 
a  stranger  in  London,  Mrs.  La  Touche, 
an  Irishwoman,  a  half-sister  of  Lord  De- 
sart,  asking  if  he  could  find  time  to  give 


1 82  Ruskin 

her  three  children  a  few  lessons  in  draw- 
ing, and  adding  that  she  ventured  to  ask 
the  favour  because  she  believed  him  to  be 
the  only  sound  teacher  of  art.  The  frank- 
ness of  the  request  took  his  fancy,  and  he 
went  round  to  call,  little  thinking  what 
was  in  store  for  him.  This  was  his  de- 
scription of  what  happened :  "  Presently 
the  drawing-room  door  opened  and  Kosie 
came  in,  quietly  taking  stock  of  me  with 
her  blue  eyes  as  she  walked  across  the 
room;  gave  me  her  hand  as  a  good  dog 
gives  its  paw,  and  then  stood  a  little 
back.  '  I  thought  you  so  ugly,'  she  told 
me  afterwards.  She  didn't  quite  mean 
that;  but  only  that  her  mother  having 
talked  much  of  my  '  greatness '  to  her,  she 
had  expected  me  to  be  something  like 
Garibaldi  or  the  Elgin  Theseus;  and  was 
extremely  disappointed." 

Kose  La  Touche  was  undoubtedly  a  very 
charming  and  precocious  child,  extremely 
beautiful,  full  of  lively  fancies,  with  mar- 
vellous power  of  winning  and  returning 


A  Study  in  Personality        183 

love,  with  pretty  half-mocking,  half-caress- 
ing ways,  with  a  set  of  pet  nicknames  for 
the  people  round  her;  just  the  sort  of 
child,  with  her  wayward  fancies  and  her 
lavish  affection,  to  win  the  heart  of  a  sor- 
rowful and  lonely  man.  He  wrote,  long 
after:  "Rose,  in  heart,  was  with  me  al- 
ways, and  all  I  did  was  for  her  sake."  One 
of  those  relations  grew  up  which  are  in- 
tensely moving  to  think  of,  and  even  to 
read  of,  but  which  can  hardly  bear  to  be 
spoken  about,  with  all  the  silly  pretty 
chatters,  the  little  jokes  and  quarrels  and 
reconciliations,  that  are  too  intimate  to 
record,  and  yet  which  may  play  so  intense 
a  part  in  daily  life.  Some  of  the  letters 
she  wrote  to  him  are  preserved — indeed  he 
carried  her  first  letter  to  himself  about  with 
him  for  years,  enclosed  in  thin  plates  of 
gold — and  some  of  his  letters  to  her  are 
printed,  in  which  one  sees  with  irrepressi- 
ble emotion  how  this  man  of  middle-age, 
in  the  forefront  of  the  writers  and  workers 
of  the  day,  poured  out  his  heart  and  mind 


1 84  Ruskin 

to  the  girl  and  depended  on  her  sympathy 
and  even  her  counsel.  Such  things  cannot 
be  quoted,  but  they  are  intensely  moving, 
and  to  me  even  more  than  beautiful.  She 
was  a  child  of  ten  when  they  first  met, 
and  when  she  was  eighteen  the  whole  of 
Ruskin's  power  of  devotion  was  centred 
upon  her.  He  told  her  of  his  desire  that 
she  should  become  his  wife,  but  she  could 
give  him  no  answer,  and  he  agreed  to  wait 
till  she  was  twenty-one.  "  Did  you  see  the 
gleam  of  sunshine  yesterday  afternoon?  " 
Euskin  wrote  to  Burne-Jones.  "  If  you 
had  only  seen  her  in  it,  bareheaded,  between 
my  laurels  and  my  primrose  bank !  "  But 
she  had  no  desire  to  change  the  old  re- 
lation, and,  moreover,  she  had  become  deeply 
devout  on  the  Evangelical  lines  which  he 
had  discarded.  She  published  a  little  re- 
ligious manual  in  1873  called  Clouds  and 
Light,  and  when  he  asked  her  for  answer, 
she  told  him  frankly  and  sweetly  enough 
that  she  could  not  marry  an  unbeliever. 
He  plunged  into  work  to  deaden  thought. 


A  Study  in  Personality       185 

In  the  autumn  of  1874  lie  heard  that  she 
was  dying;  her  precocious  intellect  and  her 
deep  religious  emotion  had  burnt  the  vital 
spark  out.  The  story  used  to  be  that  he 
went  off  at  once  to  her,  but  that  she  re- 
fused to  see  him  unless  he  could  say  that 
he  loved  God  better  than  herself,  and  this 
he  wrould  not  say.  But  the  story  is  not 
true.  He  saw  her  often,  and  was  with  her 
to  the  last.  She  died  in  1875,  and  his  heart 
was  buried  in  her  grave. 

This  is  one  of  the  little  allusions  he  made 
to  the  end  of  his  hopes,  in  a  letter  to  some 
of  his  nearest  friends: 

I  have  just  heard  that  my  poor  little  Rose 
is  gone  where  the  hawthorn  blossoms  go — 
which  I  've  been  trying  to  describe  all  the 
morning — and  can't  get  them  to  stay  with 
me.  ...  I  have  been  long  prepared,  so  you 
need  not  be  anxious  about  me.  But  the  tree 
branches  look  very  black. 

In  1874,  before  her  illness,  he  wrote  to 
his  old  friend  Miss  Beever :  "  I  wanted 
my  Eosie  here.  In  heaven  I  mean  to  go 


1 86  Ruskin 

and  talk  to  Pythagoras  and  Socrates  and 
Valerius  Publicola.  I  shan't  care  a  bit 
for  Rosie  there,  she  need  n't  think  it.  What 
will  grey  eyes  and  red  cheeks  be  good  for 
there?"  That  was  it.  He  saw  all  round 
him  others  happy  and  blest  in  wedded  love, 
refreshing  their  weary  spirits  and  healing 
the  hurts  of  combat  in  the  quiet  peace  of 
home.  Heaven  seemed  to  heap  upon  him 
the  good  things  for  which  he  did  not  care, 
and  to  deny  him  what  he  desired  and 
needed  most.  Those  who  saw  him  sur- 
rounded by  love  and  care,  honoured  and 
famous,  rich  and  using  his  wealth  gen- 
erously for  what  was  nearest  to  his  mind, 
marvelled  that  he  could  still  carry  about 
with  him  a  spring  of  secret  sorrow — which 
indeed  he  did  not  allow  to  overflow,  but 
which  yet  poisoned  all  his  happiness.  Few 
then  guessed  what  it  all  meant,  and  how 
the  distracted  work  in  which  he  indulged, 
the  irritable  restlessness  of  brain  and  heart, 
were  but  his  brave  attempts  to  forget.  We 
may  lose  ourselves  in  vain  speculation  as 


A  Study  in  Personality       187 

to  what  might  have  been  the  issue  of  it 
all,  could  he  but  have  gained  what  he  de- 
sired, or  why  so  bitter  a  cup  was  forced 
to  his  lips.  But  that  is  the  story,  and 
not  only  cannot  the  influence  of  that  love, 
which  began  so  brightly  and  gaily  under 
the  tender  lights  and  dews  of  dawn,  and 
which  waxed  into  so  hot  and  broad  a  noon 
of  passion,  be  overlooked  and  set  aside ;  but 
it  must  rather  be  regarded  as  the  one  cen- 
tral fact  of  Ruskin's  inner  life:  it  revealed 
to  him  the  worth  and  depth  of  love;  and 
in  its  agony  of  disappointment,  its  sharp 
earthly  close,  it  laid  his  spirit  in  the  dust, 
and  condemned  him  to  a  solitude  of  pain, 
the  secret  significance  of  which  perhaps 
came  home  to  him  in  those  hours  of  in- 
communicable musing,  when  the  music  of 
the  world  was  dumb  to  him,  and  the  light 
of  beauty  sickened  and  died  on  tower  and 
tree. 


As  life's  sands  ran  out,  and  Ruskin's  old 
equanimity  of  work  declined,  the  range  and 
sweep  of  his  plans  became  more  vast  and 
wide.  He  wrote  humorously  in  1875: 

I  begin  to  ask  myself,  with  somewhat  press- 
ing arithmetic,  how  much  time  is  likely  to  be 
left  me,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  to  complete  the 
various  designs  for  which,  until  past  fifty,  I 
was  merely  collecting  material.  Of  these  ma- 
terials I  have  now  enough  by  me  for  a  most 
interesting  (in  my  own  opinion)  history  of 
fifteenth-century  Florentine  Art,  in  six  octavo 
volumes;  an  analysis  of  the  Attic  art  of  the 
fifth  century  B.C.  in  three  volumes;  an  ex- 
haustive history  of  northern  thirteenth-century 
art,  in  ten  volumes ;  a  life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
with  analysis  of  modern  epic  art,  in  seven 
volumes;  a  life  of  Xenophon,  with  analysis  of 
188 


A  Study  in  Personality        189 

the  general  principles  of  education,  in  ten 
volumes;  a  commentary  on  Hesiod,  with  final 
analysis  of  the  principles  of  Political  Economy, 
in  nine  volumes;  and  a  general  description  of 
the  geology  and  botany  of  the  Alps,  in  twenty- 
four  volumes. 


He  lectured  a  good  deal  in  this  year, 
and  studied  Botany  and  Geology.  But 
since  the  Christmas  in  Venice  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  his  writings  took  on  a  new 
tinge.  He  read  the  Bible  more  diligently, 
and,  like  many  men  whose  opinions  have 
widened,  felt  its  inspiration  more  deeply, 
as  his  reliance  on  its  literal  and  verbal  ac- 
curacy declined.  At  the  same  time  he  be- 
gan to  take  up  a  distinctly  antagonistic 
attitude  to  science  and  the  conclusions  of 
science.  He  did  not  shun  the  closest  in- 
vestigations of  nature,  but  he  thought  that 
he  was  bound  to  protest  against  the  in- 
creasing tendencies  to  materialism.  He 
became  in  fact  a  mystic;  his  faith 
slipped  from  the  bands  of  orthodoxy,  and 
became  very  much  what  Carlyle's  faith 


19°  Ruskin 

was,  a  vague  but  intense  Theism,  which 
recognised,  as  far  as  one  can  apply  hu- 
man terms  to  things  so  remote  and  abstruse, 
a  mind,  a  purpose,  a  wrill  at  work  behind 
nature  and  man.  It  is  of  course  the  in- 
soluble enigma,  the  realisation  of  a  power 
presumably  all-originating  and  all-power- 
ful, which  is  yet  in  a  condition  of  combat, 
and  appears  to  thwart  its  own  designs.  It 
is  the  old  question  of  free-will  in  another 
shape.  There  is  little  logical  ground  for 
believing  in  free-will,  and  yet  it  is,  so  far 
as  experience  and  consciousness  go,  the 
one  indisputable  fact  of  life.  The  difficulty 
of  course  is  this.  If  God  is  the  origin  of 
all  phenomena  and  all  conditions,  He 
must  have  imposed  upon  Himself  limita- 
tions, because  His  law  is  not  harmonious, 
but  obstructs  itself.  The  moral  sense  is 
at  variance  with  the  natural  instinct.  But 
for  all  that  Ruskin's  faith  was  firm,  if  it 
was  not  definite,  and  he  put  it  in  the 
forefront  of  his  teaching.  He  wrote  from 
Oxford : 


A  Study  in  Personality       191 

I  gave  yesterday  the  twelfth  and  last  of  my 
course  of  lectures  this  term,  to  a  room  crowded 
by  six  hundred  people,  two-thirds  members  of 
the  University,  and  with  its  door  wedged  open 
by  those  who  could  not  get  in;  this  interest 
of  theirs  being  granted  me,  I  doubt  not,  be- 
cause for  the  first  time  in  Oxford  I  have  been 
able  to  speak  to  them  boldly  of  immortal  life. 

But  it  was  a  time  of  awful  strain.  His 
Eose  was  dying,  and  he  could  not  pledge 
his  belief  even  to  her  and  to  her  dying 
prayers.  Yet  he  opened  his  heart  to  many 
new  friends.  He  became  greatly  attached 
to  the  Duke  of  Albany,  then  at  Oxford,  and 
went  to  stay  at  Windsor  Castle  with  him. 
He  visited  Mr.  Gladstone  at  Hawarden,  and 
convinced  himself  that  he  had  been  wrong 
in  ever  doubting  his  entire  sincerity.  He 
cancelled  a  passage  he  had  written  in  Fors 
disparaging  Mr.  Gladstone's  principles,  and 
inserted  a  note  in  the  blank  space  to  say 
that  the  gap  was  a  memorial  of  rash  judg- 
ment. He  also  formed  a  close  friendship 
with  Mr.  Gladstone's  daughter  Mary,  now 
the  widowed  Mrs.  Drew.  But  things  were 


192  Ruskin 

going  with  him  from  bad  to  worse.  He 
felt  the  strain  of  his  work,  but  could  not 
rest.  He  wrote  a  touching  letter  about  his 
sense  of  inadequacy  and  failure.  It  seems 
strange  that  a  man  who  was  becoming  one 
of  the  foremost  and  most  influential  men 
in  England  should  feel  thus;  and  no  doubt 
physical  causes  were  largely  responsible. 
But  all  his  practical  enterprises  seemed  to 
break  down;  and  what  he  could  neither 
see  nor  measure  was  the  steady  growth  of 
his  influence.  He  wrote: 

My  own  feeling,  now,  is  that  everything 
which  has  hitherto  happened  to  me,  and  been 
done  by  me,  whether  well  or  ill,  has  been  fit- 
ting me  to  take  greater  fortune  more  pru- 
dently, and  to  do  better  work  more  thoroughly. 
And  just  when  I  seem  to  be  coming  out  of 
school — very  sorry  to  have  been  such  a  fool- 
ish boy,  yet  having  taken  a  prize  or  two,  ex- 
pecting now  to  enter  upon  some  more  serious 
business  than  cricket,  I  am  dismissed  by  the 
Master  I  hoped  to  serve,  with  a — "  That 's  all 
I  want  of  you,  sir." 

He  was  working  at  a  catalogue  of  Tur- 


A  Study  in  Personality       193 

ner's  drawings,  and  at  a  number  of  Fors, 
little  guessing  that  it  would  be  the  last 
he  would  write  for  seven  dreary  years ;  and 
he  gave  a  very  touching  account  of  Turner's 
last  days,  and  of  the  sense  of  failure  and 
public  indifference  which  embittered  the 
great  painter's  later  years.  He  spoke  of 
Turner's  youthful  picture  of  Coniston, 
veiled  in  morning  mists;  and  went  on  to 
tell  of  Turner's  last  prodigious  efforts,  and 
of  how  his  "  health,  and  with  it  in  great 
degree  his  mind,  failed  suddenly,  with  a 
snap  of  some  vital  cord."  And  then  he 
wrote  the  passage,  the  most  beautiful  and 
pathetic  which  he  ever  penned: 

.  .  .  Morning  breaks,  as  I  write,  along  those 
Coniston  Fells,  and  the  level  mists,  motionless 
and  grey  beneath  the  rose  of  the  moorlands, 
veil  the  lower  woods,  and  the  sleeping  village, 
and  the  long  lawns  by  the  lake-shore. 

Oh,  that  some  one  had  but  told  me,  in  my 
youth,  when  all  my  heart  seemed  to  be  set  on 
these  colours  and  clouds,  that  appear  for  a 
little  while  and  then  vanish  away,  how  little 
my  love  of  them  would  serve  me,  when  the 
13 


194  Ruskin 

silence  of  lawn  and  wood  in  the  dews  of  morn- 
ing should  be  completed;  and  all  my  thoughts 
should  be  of  those  whom,  by  neither,  I  was  to 
meet  more! 

Then,  as  suddenly,  his  friends  became 
aware  that  in  him  too  the  strain  and  the 
sorrow  of  his  life  had  broken  through  the 
bulwarks,  and  invaded  the  inmost  fortress 
of  life  and  consciousness.  His  mind  lost 
its  balance.  It  was  hoped  at  first  that  it 
was  but  a  temporary  affection,  but  it  grew 
worse  day  by  day,  and  after  a  time  of 
horrible  suspense  to  those  about  him,  his 
sudden  and  dangerous  illness  was  an- 
nounced. The  chief  feature  of  his  state 
was  a  continuous  delirium,  arising  from 
some  obscure  inflammation  of  the  tissues  of 
the  brain.  Let  me  quote  the  beautiful  and 
tender  words  of  one  of  his  nearest  friends, 
Professor  Collingwood,  on  the  subject: 

Let  such  troubles  of  the  past  be  forgotten : 
all  that  I  now  remember  of  many  a  weary 
night  and  day  is  the  vision  of  a  great  soul 
in  torment,  and  through  purgatorial  fires  the 


A  Study  in  Personality       195 

ineffable  tenderness  of  the  real  man  emerging, 
with  his  passionate  appeal  to  justice  and 
baffled  desire  for  truth.  To  those  who  could 
not  follow  the  wanderings  of  the  wearied  brain 
it  was  nothing  but  a  horrible  or  a  grotesque 
nightmare.  Some,  in  those  trials,  learnt  as 
they  could  not  otherwise  have  learnt  to  know 
him,  and  to  love  him  as  never  before. 

The  affliction  took  him  quite  unawares. 
There  had  been  definite  premonitory  symp- 
toms. The  only  thing  that  might  have 
shown  him  where  he  was  drifting  was  rapid 
alternation  of  intense  excitement,  accom- 
panied by  vivid  dreams  and  unnatural  rest- 
lessness, with  periods  of  intense  depression. 
And  here  I  will  say  a  few  words  about 
Ruskin's  mental  condition  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  He  is  often  spoken  of  as  having 
been  mad.  That  is  not  at  all  the  case. 
He  had  no  fixed  delusion,  no  insane 
preoccupation. 

He  wrote,  for  instance,  to  Miss  Gladstone 
about  one  of  his  attacks: 

I  find  it  will  be  quite  impossible  for  me  to 
come  to  Hawarden  this  autumn.  I  am  very 


196  Ruskin 

utterly  sorry,  and  should  only  make  you  sorry 
for  me  if  I  were  to  tell  you  the  half  of  the 
weaknesses  and  the  worries  which  compel  me 
to  stay  at  home,  and  forbid  all  talking.  The 
chief  of  all  reasons  being,  however,  that  in  my 
present  state  of  illness,  nearly  every  word  any- 
body says,  if  I  care  for  them,  either  grieves 
or  astonishes  me  to  a  degree  which  puts  me 
off  my  sleep,  and  off  my  work,  and  off  my 
meat.  I  am  obliged  to  work  at  botany  and 
mineralogy,  and  to  put  cotton  in  my  ears ;  but 
you  know  one  can't  pay  visits  while  one 's 
climbing  that  hill  of  the  voices,  even  if  some 
sweet  ones  mingle  in  the  murmur  of  them. 
I  'm  rather  going  down  the  hill  than  up  just 
now,  it 's  so  slippery ;  but  I  have  n't  turned 
—only  slipped  backwards. 

Or  again  lie  wrote,  at  a  later  date : 

If  a  great  illness  like  that  is  quite  con- 
quered, the  return  to  the  lovely  world  is  well 
worth  having  left  it  for  the  painful  time;  one 
never  knew  what  beauty  was  before  (unless 
in  happy  love  which  I  had  about  two  hours 
and  three-quarters  of  once  in  my  life).  I  am 
really  better  now  than  for  some  years  back, 
able  every  day  for  a  little  work,  not  fast,  but 
very  slow  (second  Praet.  is  n't  out  yet,  I  'm 
just  at  work  on  the  eleventh  chapter),  and 


A  Study  in  Personality       197 

able   to   take   more   pleasure   in   things    than 
lately. 

For  a  good  many  years  after  this  first 
attack  of  derangement  and  delirium,  he  had 
similar  attacks,  but  never  one  so  bad.  They 
were  generally  heralded  by  the  same  excite- 
ment and  the  same  depression;  but  when 
they  were  over,  he  returned  rapidly  and 
securely  to  his  ordinary  health;  and  in- 
deed, as  Professor  Collingwood  wrote,  they 
passed  over  him  like  storm-clouds  leaving 
a  clear  sky.  Indeed  he  was  in  many  ways 
happier  and  more  tranquil  in  the  intervals 
than  he  had  been  before.  He  knew  per- 
fectly well  what  had  happened  to  him,  that 
he  had  been,  as  it  is  called,  out  of  his  mind. 
But  he  spoke  of  it  frankly  and  even  humor- 
ously, and  described  his  insane  fancies.  He 
never  showed  any  morbidity  about  it,  nor 
did  it  in  any  way  affect  his  relation  to  his 
own  circle  or  to  his  outside  friends.  It 
just  came  and  went  as  other  illness  might 
come  and  pass  away.  He  had  fallen  ill  in 
February.  By  May  he  was  at  work  again. 


198  Ruskin 

His  friends,  anxious  to  show  their  sympathy 
and  esteem,  bought  Turner's  great  picture 
of  the  Spliigen  for  1000  guineas,  and  gave 
it  him,  to  his  great  delight. 


But  there  was  a  singular  and  notorious 
adventure  just  ahead  of  him.  He  had  taken 
occasion  in  a  number  of  Fors  to  dismiss  the 
works  of  Mr.  Whistler  with  a  contemptuous 
paragraph. 

I  cannot  here  go  into  the  main  question. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Whistler  was 
in  his  way  a  very  great  artist,  though  a 
very  unequal  one.  Some  of  his  portraits 
are  beyond  praise.  But  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  his  brilliant  and  impression- 
ist experiments  in  colour  in  the  pictures 
such  as  the  Nocturnes,  and  in  particular 
the  Nocturne  in  Blue  and  Silver  of  old 
Battersea  Bridge,  which  was  produced  in 
court,  can  be  taken  quite  seriously.  But 
art  is  one  of  those  things  about  which  it 
is  impossible  to  argue.  The  pictures  are 


A  Study  in  Personality       199 

beautiful  in  the  eyes  of  trained  critics,  and 
have  a  mysterious  suggestiveness.  Their 
permanence  cannot  be  foretold.  The  point 
is  that  no  tribunal  can  lay  down  whether 
a  particular  picture  is  great  and  good  art, 
because  so  much  depends  upon  its  suggest- 
ive effect.  One  might  as  well  have  a  law- 
suit about  a  lyric  of  Tennyson's.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  so  far  as  the  artist  is  a 
tradesman,  he  may  be  affected  by  a  damag- 
ing statement  of  a  critic,  and  deprived  of 
his  means  of  livelihood. 

Ruskin  it  seems,  before  his  illness,  anti- 
cipated with  unconcealed  delight  the  pro- 
spect of  the  trial.  He  wrote  or  said  to  Lady 
Burne-Jones:  "  It's  mere  nuts  and  nectar 
to  me,  the  notion  of  having  to  answer  for 
myself  in  court,  and  the  whole  thing  will 
enable  me  to  assert  some  principles  of  art 
economy  which  I  've  never  got  into  the 
public's  head  by  writing;  but  may  get  sent 
all  over  the  world  vividly -in  a  newspaper 
report  or  two."  The  words  complained  of 
were  these.  Kuskin  had  written  that  pic- 


20o  Ruskin 

tures  ought  not  to  have  been  admitted  to 
the  Grosvenor  Gallery  in  which  the  ill- 
educated  conceit  of  the  artist  so  nearly  ap- 
proaches the  aspect  of  wilful  imposture.  "  I 
have  seen  and  heard  much  of  cockney  im- 
pudence before  now,  but  never  expected  to 
hear  a  coxcomb  ask  two  hundred  guineas 
for  flinging  a  pot  of  paint  in  the  public's 
face."  Euskin  was  too  ill  to  be  present  at 
the  trial,  but  Whistler  gave  his  evidence 
with  his  unparalleled  assurance  and  hu- 
mour. He  admitted  that  he  had  "  knocked 
off"  a  Nocturne  in  two  days.  The  At- 
torney-General said :  "  The  labour  of  two 
days,  then,  is  that  for  which  you  ask  two 
hundred  guineas?  "  "  No,"  said  Whistler, 
"  I  ask  it  for  the  knowledge  of  a  lifetime." 

Burne-Jones  himself  gave  memorable  evi- 
dence. Bowen  asked  him  if  he  thought  one 
of  the  Nocturnes  a  work  of  Art. 

Burne-Jones. — "No,  I  cannot  say  that  it 
is.  It  is  only  one  of  a  thousand  failures 
that  artists  have  made  in  their  efforts  to 
paint  night." 


A  Study  in  Personality       201 

Boiccn. — "  Is  that  picture  in  your  judg- 
ment worth  two  hundred  guineas?  " 

Burne-Joncs. — "  No,  I  cannot  say  that  it 
is,  seeing  how  much  careful  work  men  do 
for  much  less.  Mr.  Whistler  gave  infinite 
promise  at  first,  which  he  has  not  since 
justified.  I  think  he  has  evaded  the  great 
difficulty  of  painting,  and  has  not  tested 
his  powers  by  carrying  it  out  .  .  .  the 
danger  is  this,  that  if  unfinished  pictures 
become  common,  we  shall  arrive  at  a  stage 
of  mere  manufacture,  and  the  art  of  the 
country  will  be  degraded." 

Of  old  Battersea  Bridge  the  Judge  (Hud- 
dleston )  said :  "  Are  those  figures  on  the 
top  intended  for  people?  " 

Whistler. — "  They  are  just  what  you 
like." 

Judge. — "  That  is  a  barge  beneath?  " 

Whistler. — "  Yes,  I  am  very  much  flat- 
tered at  your  seeing  that." 

The  whole  trial  was  merely  farcical,  and 
the  jury  gave  a  verdict  in  Whistler's  favour, 
with  damages  one  farthing.  It  is  hard  to 


202  Ruskin 

see  what  else  they  could  do  but  enter  into 
the  joke.  Both  sides  had  to  pay  their  own 
costs,  and  Kuskin's  friends  subscribed  to 
pay  his,  which  came  to  £385.  Whistler 
wrote  to  his  solicitor  to  suggest  that  his 
own  supporters  should  do  the  same,  add- 
ing, "  in  the  event  of  a  subscription,  I 
would  willingly  contribute  my  own  mite." 
They  were  not  subscribed  for,  and  Whistler 
went  through  the  bankruptcy  court.  It  is 
said  that  he  wore  the  farthing  on  his  watch- 
chain  till  the  end  of  his  life. 

It  is  not  a  very  dignified  episode;  and 
nothing  can  really  justify  the  tone  of  arro- 
gant and  malicious  contempt  which  Ruskin 
had  used.  It  was  a  flash  of  his  perverse 
and  irritable  dogmatism.  He  had  cracked 
the  literary  whip  so  long  and  so  loud,  and 
so  many  whips  had  been  cracked  at  him- 
self, that  he  had  forgotten  how  much  such 
flourishes  might  hurt. 

But  further  than  that,  one  cannot  acquit 
Ruskin  in  the  matter  of  having  exhibited 
an  evil  and  a  tyrannical  temper.  He  was 


A  Study  in  Personality       203 

a  man  of  very  great  distinction,  and  he 
held  a  supreme  and  unassailed  position  in 
the  world  of  art.  Single-handed  he  had 
accomplished  a  great  revolution;  he  had, 
like  Mahomet,  broken  the  old  idols  of  the 
land,  and  he  had  established  a  new  set  of 
idols  in  their  place.  He  must  have  known 
that  his  words  would  carry  immense  weight. 
If  he  had  made  the  position  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  secure,  he  ought  to  have  re- 
flected that  he  could  do  much  to  unmake 
the  position  of  a  single  artist.  And  then 
the  criticism  was  what  the  French  call 
saugrenu — it  was  stupid,  and  it  was  ex- 
pressed brutally  and  vindictively,  consider- 
ing the  artists  whom  he  had  ignored  and 
the  strange  medley  of  painters  whom  he 
had  praised;  considering  too  that  there 
were  great  tracts  of  art  of  which  he  knew 
nothing,  and  that  his  life  had  been  spent 
in  discovering  painters  of  unrecognised 
merit,  the  whole  judgment  was  childish  and 
petulant.  At  this  very  time  he  was  exalt- 
ing to  the  skies  Miss  Kate  Greenaway,  an 


204  Ruskin 

artist  who  had  no  particular  technical  dis- 
tinction, but  only  a  delightful  knack  of 
catching  the  charm  of  childhood. 

It  may  be  urged  in  excuse  that  he  was 
at  this  time  more  conscious  of  failure  than 
of  success;  that  he  was  in  a  state  of  ex- 
asperated indignation  against  the  prejudice 
and  the  indifference  of  the  world  about 
causes  which  he  had  passionately  at  heart. 
And  then  too  he  loathed  the  cynical  levity, 
the  touch  of  the  mountebank  which  there 
undoubtedly  was  about  Whistler.  He  could 
not  believe  that  any  great  art  could  pro- 
ceed from  such  a  spirit.  He  was  bound 
indeed  by  his  own  principles  to  believe  and 
maintain  this,  though  he  had  never  taken 
the  trouble  to  find  out  that  those  principles 
were  not  true.  He  could  not  see  that  there 
might  co-exist  in  a  character  like  Whist- 
ler's a  great  seriousness  about  art  and  a 
superficial  irony  about  life.  He  felt  with 
Burne-Jones  that  the  point  at  issue  was 
moral  rather  than  artistic,  and  the  facile 
impressiveness,  the  charming  trickery  of 


A  Study  in  Personality       205 

Whistler's  art  seemed  to  him  wicked,  per- 
nicious, and  degrading.  But  the  episode 
is  intensely  significant,  because  it  tears 
away  the  veil  of  courtesy  and  humour  and 
chivalry,  the  personal  appeal  which  made 
Ruskin's  attitude  to  human  beings  so  touch- 
ing and  so  fascinating,  and  reveals  the  dog- 
matic and  self-righteous  spirit  which  was 
the  root  of  all  his  troubles,  and  which  I 
personally  believe  was  the  reason  why  he 
needed  so  heavy  and  persistent  a  chasten- 
ing. The  spirit  of  dogmatism,  of  intellect- 
ual and  spiritual  pride,  is,  I  make  no 
doubt,  the  most  deadly  and  dangerous 
quality  in  the  world.  The  old  allegory  of 
the  fall  of  Satan  and  the  rebel  angels  is 
a  vehicle  of  the  sternest  and  hardest  truth, 
because  it  shows  what  is  or  may  be  the 
last  and  deepest  fault  of  the  purest  and 
most  exalted  spirit.  Euskin  was  by  nature 
a  very  noble  and  guileless  character.  His 
intellectual  energy  saved  him  from  all 
grosser  sins;  but  he  had,  and  it  would  be 
idle  to  conceal  it,  this  one  intolerable  fault, 


206  Ruskin 

which  was  hidden  from  him  by  the  gener- 
osity and  fineness  of  his  enthusiasms.  He 
knew  he  was  right;  and  though  this  gave 
much  of  what  he  said  a  great  intensity  and 
driving  force,  because  there  are  so  many 
natures  in  the  world  who  are  more  desirous 
of  being  commanded  than  of  being  per- 
suaded, yet  when  it  over-brimmed  the  cup, 
it  foamed  itself  away  in  rash  and  mistaken 
judgments,  which  stained  and  encumbered 
his  message  and  left  him  weak  and  help- 
less. I  look  upon  Buskin's  whole  life  as 
the  exorcising  and  casting  out  of  that 
demon.  If,  as  I  hold,  the  character,  the 
individuality,  survives  alike  the  memory 
and  the  mortal  frame  and  the  frailer 
elements,  then  one  can  see  the  need  of 
this  sad  process  of  chastening  and  cor- 
recting; and  not  otherwise.  No  faith 
can  have  vitality  or  hope  which  does 
not  hold  that  we  are  somehow  the  better 
for  our  failures  and  our  falls,  however 
much  they  may  have  devastated  our  life 
and  influence,  with  whatever  shame  and 


A  Study  in  Personality       207 

self-reproach   they   may   have   wasted   our 
days. 


Few  things  are  more  unsatisfactory  than 
descriptions  of  places  one  has  not  seen.  A 
dozen  scratches  with  a  pen  on  a  piece  of 
paper  would  give  you  a  better  idea  of 
Brantwood  than  a  dozen  elaborate  para- 
graphs. That  is  a  humiliating  fact  for  a 
writer,  and  I  have  often  wondered  why  it 
is  that  words  are  so  vague  and  powerless. 
What  is  worse  still,  one  is  generally  dis- 
appointed in  the  appearance  of  a  place  of 
which  one  has  read  an  elaborate  description. 
I  am  in  hopes  that  some  of  you  may  some 
day  take  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  Brantwood, 
and  it  is  such  a  beautiful  place  that  I  am 
riot  much  afraid  that  you  will  be  disap- 
pointed. You  must  imagine  a  long  and 
rather  narrow  lake — the  lake  of  Coniston 
—it  looks  on  the  map  like  an  elongated 
sausage — with  low  hills  on  either  side. 
Suppose  yourself  going  up  the  lake  from 


208  Ruskin 

the  rather  dreary  and  undulating  country 
that  lies  between  its  southern  end  and  the 
sea.  About  two  miles  from  the  upper  end 
we  will  pause.  At  the  head  of  the  water 
lie  the  steep  woods  of  larch  and  pine,  of 
Monk  Coniston;  to  the  left  is  a  little  scat- 
tered village  of  stone  or  white  rough-cast 
houses  terraced  up  the  slope.  Above  them 
rises  the  great  mountain  called  the  Old 
Man,  and  the  ragged  long-backed  height  of 
Wetherlam, — huge  green  hills,  with  rolling 
outlines,  and  outcrops  of  rock,  their  dark 
hollows  and  quiet  folds  full,  as  I  have  often 
seen  them,  of  a  soft  golden  haze. 

On  the  right,  under  a  long  line  of  heath- 
ery fells,  their  skirts  covered  with  larch- 
woods  and  oak-copses,  about  a  hundred  feet 
above  the  lake,  the  big  irregular  white 
house  of  Brantwood  poises  on  the  slope, 
with  green  meadows  below  it  to  the  water's 
edge,  commanding  a  wide  view  down  the 
lake  and  across  to  the  Old  Man.  The  house 
lies  embosomed  in  the  thickets,  among  steep- 
hanging  close-grown  copses,  with  long  stems 


A  Study  in  Personality       209 

intertwined,  and  mossy  grass  under  foot, 
rich  in  spring  with  daffodils  and  hyacinths. 
There  are  little  climbing  paths  everywhere; 
many  dashing  streams  descend  from  the 
moorland  in  pools  and  water-breaks,  among 
moss-grown  stones,  and  the  heathery  bluffs 
above  are  fenced  from  the  wood  by  high 
stone  walls. 

The  house  was  hardly  more  than  a  cot- 
tage when  Mr.  Kuskin  first  bought  it,  a 
damp  and  ramshackle  little  place  belonging 
to  Linton  the  engraver.  He  bought  it  for 
£1500,  without  even  going  to  see  it,  and 
it  cost  him  several  thousand  pounds  to 
make  it  comfortable.  It  stands  on  a  plat- 
form partly  hollowed  out  of  the  rock  be- 
hind; and  the  rooms  which  Mr.  Euskin 
added  tower  up  behind  the  old  low  front. 
So  steep  is  the  fall  of  the  ground  that  the 
big  studio  at  the  back  of  the  house,  four 
storeys  up,  has  a  door  which  opens  on  the 
wood  above.  The  whole  place  has  always 
to  me  a  half-Italian  air  about  it,  like  a 

villa    among    the   chestnut    woods    of    the 

14 


210  Ruskin 

Apennines.  You  approach  it  by  a  steep 
little  carriage  drive,  embowered  in  rhodo- 
dendrons. As  the  house  extended  itself 
backwards  into  the  hill,  it  swallowed  up 
the  ground  space  where  a  carriage  could 
turn;  and  so  by  an  ingenious  arrangement 
the  drive  passes  under  the  back  of  the  house 
itself,  through  a  great  stone-arched  pas- 
sage, very  Italian  in  plan.  It  is  all  plain 
rough-cast,  with  square  windows,  and 
slated  with  thick  blue  country  slate.  The 
comfort  of  it  is  that  there  is  no  attempt 
whatever  at  style  or  taste;  it  is  a  house  to 
live  in,  not  to  look  at.  The  only  signs  of 
Gothic  about  it  are  a  rather  cockneyfled 
octagonal  turret  at  one  corner,  built  to  se- 
cure a  wide  view  over  the  lake,  and  a  row 
of  little  Gothic  windows,  with  red  stone 
facings,  in  the  dining-room  added  by  Mr. 
Ruskin.  It  has  all  the  pleasing  irregu- 
larity of  a  big  house  which  has  grown  out 
of  a  small  one,  full  of  endless  passages 
and  steep  little  staircases.  When  I  last 
visited  it,  Mrs.  Severn,  to  whom  it  now 


A  Study  in  Personality       211 

belongs,  kindly  allowed  me  to  explore  the 
whole  domain,  and  I  was  taken  round  by 
Baxter,  Ruskin's  valet,  a  cheerful,  bald, 
ruddy  Irishman,  who  had  the  rare  art  of 
showing  me  what  I  wanted  to  see  without 
appearing  ever  to  have  taken  a  visitor 
round  before. 

The  whole  place  is  extraordinarily  simple 
and  comfortable;  only  gradually  does  one 
realise  the  amazing  splendour  and  rarity 
of  the  pictures  which  adorn  the  house.  It 
is  kept  almost  exactly  as  it  was  when  Rus- 
kin  died  ten  years  ago,  and  I  suppose  that 
the  pictures  must  be  worth  over  a  hundred 
thousand  pounds.  I  cannot  say  what  an 
impression  of  what  the  Romans  called 
pietas,  reverential  affection  and  tenderness, 
it  gives  to  see  the  place  preserved  with 
such  loving  care.  To  put  it  as  plainly  as 
I  can,  the  locking-up  of  so  valuable  a  treas- 
ure of  art,  which  could  be  so  easily  dis- 
persed, in  so  simple  and  unquestioning  a 
spirit,  merely  in  order  to  leave  the  shrine 
of  a  great  man's  life  untouched,  is  an 


212  Ruskin 

evidence  of  a  loyalty  as  rare  as  it  is 
noble. 

Let  me  give  you  two  instances.  The  din- 
ing-room contains  a  great  Titian,  a  Tinto- 
retto, a  portrait  of  Raffaelle,  probably 
painted  by  himself,  a  portrait  of  Reynolds 
as  a  boy,  by  himself,  a  portrait  of  Turner 
as  a  boy,  by  himself. 

But  more  moving  still  is  the  sight  of 
Ruskin's  bedroom,  just  as  it  was.  A  tiny 
room,  with  one  window,  an  ugly  grey  paper, 
drugget  on  the  floor;  a  heavy  clumsy  ma- 
hogany bed  and  old-fashioned  mahogany 
furniture;  a  big  book-shelf  of  wrell-used 
readable  books,  poetry,  novels,  and  bio- 
graphies ;  and  on  the  walls,  in  very  ordinary 
frames,  hung  close  together,  some  twenty 
of  the  most  magnificent  Turner  water- 
colours  in  the  world — and  among  them  a 
little  dreary  water-colour  painting  by  old 
Mr.  Ruskin,  of  Conway  Castle,  about  which 
his  father  used  to  tell  Ruskin  a  story  every 
morning  when  he  used  as  a  little  boy  to  come 
in  before  breakfast  to  watch  papa  shaving. 


A  Study  in  Personality       213 

That  is  a  moving  place,  that  little  room, 
haunted,  alas,  with  very  heavy  and  shadowy 
fears  and  sorrows,  sacred  if  any  room  is 
sacred,  not  to  be  visited  with  light-hearted 
curiosity,  but  with  the  reverence  due  to 
the  sufferings  of  a  noble  spirit.  When  Mrs. 
Severn  first  took  me  there,  some  years  ago, 
her  kind  eyes  filled  suddenly  with  tears 
which  she  did  not  even  try  to  dissemble, 
and  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  was 
no  less  moved,  for  I  knew  what  her  thoughts 
must  be. 

Down  below  is  the  little  low-ceiled  study, 
where  Euskin  worked,  sitting  at  a  round 
table  in  the  bow  that  looks  out  upon  the 
lake  and  the  mountains.  It  was  there  that 
he  penned  those  intensely  pathetic  words 
that  I  have  quoted,  the  last  he  wrote  before 
he  sank  into  the  long  seven  years'  silence. 

The  room  itself  has  the  same  air  of  com- 
fort, almost  bourgeois  cosiness,  which  is  so 
strong  a  note  of  the  house.  The  mahogany 
chairs  are  upholstered  in  a  vivid  emerald 
green;  there  is  a  writing-table,  which  used 


214  Ruskin 

every  noon  to  be  covered  with  letters  set 
out  to  dry,  for  Ruskin  used  no  blotting- 
paper.  There  are  great  presses  for  sketches 
and  manuscripts  and  minerals;  endless  pic- 
tures of  his  own,  in  stacks:  it  is  evidently 
the  room  of  a  very  hard-working  and  in- 
dustrious man,  who  needed  to  refer  to  many 
papers,  and  to  have  them  in  perfect  order 
close  at  hand.  But  anything  more  wholly 
unsesthetic,  more  unlike  the  perverted  idea 
of  Kuskin,  cannot  be  conceived;  domestic 
peace  and  convenient  simplicity  are  the 
notes  of  the  place.  As  the  old  valet  said 
to  me,  showing  me  a  great  mass  of  sketches 
and  notes,  filling  a  pile  of  cardboard  boxes, 
made  for  the  Stones  of  Venice — "  Yes,  he 
was  the  most  industrious  man  I  ever  saw 
in  my  life,  was  the  Professor ! " 

There  are  three  pictures  in  the  house 
which  I  saw  with  great  emotion.  One  was 
a  fine  water-colour  of  Kuskin  by  Richmond, 
when  he  was  twenty-eight.  It  represents 
him  as  a  slim  and  graceful  man,  in  white 
duck  trousers  strapped  beneath  elegant 


A  Study  in  Personality       215 

boots,  leaning  forward  as  lie  sits,  with  a 
crayon  in  his  hand.  His  wavy  hair,  his 
bright  complexion,  his  blue  eyes  have  an 
air  of  combined  sweetness  and  confidence 
which  is  very  engaging;  you  feel  in  the 
presence  of  a  charming,  buoyant,  and  very 
positive  young  man,  full  of  enjoyment  and 
delight,  and  quite  capable  of  telling  all  the 
world  what  to  enjoy  and  admire. 

Then  there  is  a  little  sketch,  by  himself, 
of  himself  at  the  age  of  fifty — the  same 
face,  a  little  dimmed  and  sharpened  by  life, 
but  with  an  air  of  vitality  and  alertness, 
though  possibly  a  touch  of  primness  and 
downrightness  about  it. 

Then  there  is  the  grand  picture  of  him 
not  long  before  the  end,  by  Mr.  Severn. 
The  hair  is  shot  with  silver,  and  he  has 
a  long  flowing  white  beard.  The  beard 
greatly  improved  the  solemnity  and  bene- 
volence of  his  look.  His  mouth  had  been 
injured  by  the  bite  of  a  dog  when  he  was 
a  child,  and  had  always  a  somewhat  pugna- 
cious expression. 


216  Ruskin 

As  Burne- Jones  once  wrote: 

The  hair  that  he  has  grown  over  his  mouth 
hides  that  often  angry  feature,  and  his  eyes 
look  gentle  and  invite  the  unwary,  who  could 
never  guess  the  dragon  that  lurks  in  the  bush 
below. 

But  Kuskin  had  no  illusions  about  his 
own  appearance.  He  wrote  to  M.  Chesneau 
in  1883: 

Alas,  those  photographs  you  read  so  subtly 
are  not  worth  your  pains.  The  Barbe  de 
Fleuve  only  came  because  I  was  too  ill  to  shave ; 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  face  is  saddened  and 
weakened  by  anger,  disappointment,  and  vari- 
ous forms  of  luxury  and  laziness.  .  .  .  Car- 
peaux's  would  have  been  beautiful,  had  he 
been  fortunate  in  his  youth;  mine  would  have 
been  stronger  had  I  been  unfortunate — in  good 
time! 

The  eyes  of  the  portrait  are  still  blue  and 
smiling,  and  the  complexion  has  still  that 
porcelain  clearness  which  comes  of  tem- 
perate living  and  pure  thoughts.  But  such 
a  look  of  patience  and  sadness  in  the  wide- 


A  Study  in  Personality       217 

open  eyes  and  great  drooping  eyebrows! 
He  sits  sunk  down  in  a  chair,  looking  up 
and  out,  as  though  there  was  indeed  a  dawn 
of  peace  behind  the  cloud,  of  which  he  saw 
the  first  faint  radiance. 

Yet  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  connect 
only  mournful  or  tragic  memories  wTith 
Brantwood.  It  was  indeed,  as  Carlyle  said 
of  Fox  How,  Dr.  Arnold's  house  not  many 
miles  from  Coniston,  "  a  temple  of  indus- 
trious peace."  Sorrowful  and  in  a  sense 
embittered  as  the  drift  of  Ruskin's  thought 
was,  he  had  a  great  power  of  recuperation 
and  of  immersing  himself  in  his  work.  He 
was  probably  happier  than  he  knew;  and 
it  is  hardly  possible  to  have  a  more  beauti- 
ful picture  of  happy  and  serious  domestic 
life  than  that  lived  by  the  circle  at  Brant- 
wood.  His  cousin  Joanna  and  her  husband, 
Arthur  Severn,  lived  with  him.  The  latter 
is  an  accomplished  artist  and  a  man  of  great 
social  charm,  while  Mrs.  Severn  is,  as  I 
have  said,  one  of  the  people  who,  by  rea- 
son of  extraordinary  unselfishness,  great 


2i8  Ruskin 

practical  power,  devoted  affection,  and  hu- 
morous perception,  radiate  a  kind  of  happi- 
ness about  them;  their  children  were  born 
and  grew  up  at  Brantwood,  so  that  Ruskin 
had  all  the  interests  and  affections  of  an 
almost  patriarchal  circle.  Then  there  were 
great  friends  close  at  hand.  The  Miss 
Beevers,  who  lived  at  the  head  of  the  Lake, 
were  clever,  simple-minded,  active,  and  sym- 
pathetic women,  whose  relations  with  Mr. 
Ruskin  were  sisterly  rather  than  neigh- 
bourly. Some  of  his  most  beautiful  and 
intimate  letters  were  written  to  them. 
Then  the  whole  establishment  was  of  a 
tribal  type — the  servants  were  as  much 
friends  as  servants;  and  Ruskin  by  his  per- 
sonal charm  had  a  way  of  establishing 
friendly  relations  with  simple  people.  He 
would  visit  the  village  school  to  talk  to 
the  children,  and  his  letters  are  full  of 
stories  of  the  interests  and  sayings  of  the 
girls,  rather  perhaps  than  of  the  boys,  of 
the  farmers  and  herdsmen  in  the  fells.  As 
life  went  on  he  became  more  tranquil — but 


A  Study  in  Personality       219 

he  had  always  lived  rather  a  dual  life,  the 
life  of  lonely  reverie  and  a  social  life 
as  well,  in  which  he  just  put  aside  his  pri- 
vate cares  and  displayed  all  his  incompar- 
able variety  and  charm  of  talk.  He  was 
very  fond  of  showing  his  treasures  to  in- 
terested listeners;  and  the  discursiveness 
of  mind  which  made  his  later  public  writ- 
ings so  hard  to  follow  was  an  added  charm 
in  his  conversation.  The  people  who  came 
in  a  solemn  mood  to  Brantwood,  as  if  they 
were  going  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  a  prophet 
like  Elijah  in  a  cleft  of  the  rocks,  had  the 
nonsense  taken  very  quickly  out  of  them 
at  finding  a  courteous  English  gentleman 
in  the  middle  of  a  very  cheerful  family  cir- 
cle, and  were  almost  scandalised  when  the 
Professor,  as  he  was  called,  instead  of  in- 
dulging in  scathing  diatribes  on  the  luxury 
and  selfishness  of  the  age,  spent  the  even- 
ing in  joining  with  more  energy  than 
skill  in  the  chorus  of  a  nigger  melody,  or 
clapping  his  hands  with  convulsions  of 
laughter  at  some  topical  comic  song.  A 


22O  Ruskin 

pompous  disciple  who  called  at  Brantwood 
and  went  away  appalled  at  his  hero's  levity, 
said  sorrowfully  afterwards  to  his  friends: 
"  It  was  a  great  disappointment  to  find  that 
he  is  no  true  Ruskinian."  One  little  tra- 
dition which  I  heard  on  the  spot  is  so 
amusing  that  I  cannot  refrain  from  repeat- 
ing it  here.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  one 
of  his  later  birthdays,  when  a  large  deputa- 
tion of  his  admirers,  without  giving  any 
notice  of  their  intention,  appeared  at  the 
front  door  of  Brantwood,  sang  a  kind  of 
serenade  to  their  idol,  and  then  requested 
to  see  him.  Mr.  Ruskin  was  unwell,  and 
not  in  a  very  benevolent  mood.  However, 
he  appeared,  and  the  solemn  disciple  who 
had  charge  of  the  proceedings  came  for- 
ward, and  in  language  which  he  believed 
to  be  appropriate  to  the  taste  of  the 
prophet,  said,  "  Master,  was  not  that  a  right 
jocund  strain?"  Mr.  Ruskin  replied:  "I 

x 

am  afraid  I  do  not  know  anything  about 

/ 

that,  and  I  am  sure  I  am  very  much  obliged 
to  you;  but  I  have  a  particular  desire  to 


A  Study  in  Personality       221 

be  left  alone,  and  so   I   will  wish  you  a 
very  good  morning." 

It  has  been  sometimes  alleged  with  ex- 
traordinary absurdity  that  Ruskin  was  a 
poseur.  He  had  of  course  just  as  much 
of  the  quality  as  is  necessary  for  a  man 
whose  work  is  that  of  a  writer  and  lec- 
turer and  controversialist.  He  liked  to  ex- 
press his  opinion,  and  he  had  no  objection 
to  expressing  it  in  public.  If  you  hold  very 
strong  views  on  many  matters  of  public 
concern,  and  if  you  think  it  important  that 
other  people  should  adopt  your  views,  you 
naturally  wish  to  express  them  as  effect- 
ively as  possible,  and  you  use  the  arts 
which  all  public  performers  must  con- 
descend to.  But  Mr.  Ruskin  never  did  con- 
descend to  use  public  arts,  except  the  arts 
of  the  accomplished  pugilist.  He  was  a 
hard  hitter  of  amazing  dexterity.  But  he 
did  not  hold  or  express  his  opinions  because 
he  wished  to  enhance  his  own  impressive- 
ness  or  his  own  fame.  Indeed,  for  years 
and  years  he  risked  a  very  secure  fame  for 


222  Ruskin 

the  sake  of  unpopular  causes  and  vision- 
ary schemes;  and  he  had  a  very  strong 
sense  of  his  claim  to  independence,  and 
his  right  to  live  his  life  on  his  own  lines. 

And  the  life  he  loved  was  the  kind  of 
life  he  lived  at  Brantwood — simple,  com- 
fortable, and  sociable.  He  saw  a  great 
number  of  visitors,  and  he  was  not  in  the 
least  troubled  by  inconvenient  shyness. 
There  was  a  perpetual  succession  of  guests 
of  every  kind;  and  his  work  over — it  was 
all  done  as  a  rule  by  the  time  of  the  mid- 
day meal — he  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  in 
simple  domestic  recreations.  He  was  fond 
of  woodmanship.  His  soft  hat,  his  hedging- 
gloves,  and  his  chopper  were  very  charac- 
teristic signs  of  his  presence,  as  they  lay 
on  the  hall  table.  There  was  a  carpentering 
woodshop,  for  framing  and  modelling;  a 
little  fleet  of  boats  lay  in  the  miniature 
harbour,  the  pier  of  which  was  built  by 
the  young  men  who  assisted  him  in  trans- 
lating Xenophon.  There  were  innumerable 
pet  animals  all  about.  Geological  studies 


A  Study  in  Personality       223 

were  always  proceeding.  There  were  ex- 
periments going  on  on  the  hill  for  reclaim- 
ing waste  land;  there  were  all  sorts  of  wells 
and  water-courses  contrived  in  the  copse  for 
the  moorland  streams:  heather  and  fern 
were  rooted  up,  and  the  scanty  soil  pre- 
pared for  a  crop  of  oats,  with  the  result 
that  in  the  next  heavy  rains  not  only  were 
the  oats  carried  away,  but  the  very  field 
itself,  leaving  nothing  but  the  bare  stone 
hill  behind. 

And  at  home  he  was  always  willing  to 
read  aloud,  to  play  chess,  to  talk.  Let  me 
add  another  little  anecdote.  There  came 
one  day  a  distinguished  American  to  stay 
at  Brantwood.  To  the  surprise  of  the  party 
he  became  very  ill  at  ease  at  dinner,  and 
appeared  to  be  labouring  under  grave  dis- 
tress of  mind;  but  as  the  evening  went  on 
he  recovered  his  spirits.  However,  the 
thing  had  been  so  marked  that  Mrs.  Severn, 
with  simple  courtesy,  asked  him  if  any- 
thing had  occurred  to  vex  him.  He  smiled 
rather  awkwardly,  and  said :  "  Yes,  I  was 


224  Ruskin 

distressed  at  dinner  to  hear,  as  I  thought, 
our  venerable  host  spoken  of  before  his 
face  as  *  the  cuss/  which  is  an  undignified 
and  rather  disagreeable  term  of  our  own." 
The  fact  was  that  Ruskin  was  in  his  own 
circle  often  called  by  the  old  abbreviation 
of  the  word  cousin — "  the  coz," — which  need 
hardly  have  disturbed  the  sensibilities  of 
his  guest. 

4 

And  now  I  shall  ask  your  leave  to  give 
a  brief  account  of  my  one  deeply  treasured 
sight  of  Kuskin.  I  was  a  boy  at  Eton,  near 
the  top  of  the  school.  Everything  was  done 
in  a  curiously  independent  fashion  at  Eton 
in  those  days.  I  was  President  of  a  Liter- 
ary Society  which  held  meetings;  but  in- 
stead of  our  lectures  being  arranged  by 
the  authorities,  the  matter  was  left  wholly 
to  ourselves.  We  invited  our  lecturers, 
and  left  them,  with  the  cheerful  indifference 
of  youth,  to  shift  wholly  for  themselves. 
Sometimes  we  quartered  them  on  a  friendly 


A  Study  in  Personality       225 

master,  sometimes  we  left  them  to  provide 
their  own  dinner  and  bed.  On  taking  office 
I  wrote  to  half-a-dozen  of  the  most  eminent 
men  in  England,  requesting  them  to  come 
down  and  lecture  to  us.  They  must  have 
thought  it  very  odd  to  be  invited  by  a 
schoolboy,  but  perhaps  they  did  not  wholly 
dislike  it.  At  any  rate  they  most  of  them 
accepted.  Ruskin  was  a  mere  name  to  me 
in  those  days.  I  had  perhaps  turned  over 
a  volume  or  two  of  his  works,  and  I  ex- 
pect thought  them  of  little  merit.  Any- 
how, he  wrote  to  say  he  would  come,  and 
that  he  would  lecture  on  Amiens.  And 
then  I  think  I  had  half-a-dozen  of  his  let- 
ters, very  friendly  and  charming,  sending 
packets  of  drawings  and  plans  which  were 
to  be  put  in  the  library  to  be  looked  at 
beforehand.  I  did  not  put  them  in  the 
library,  and  I  doubt  if  I  even  acknow- 
ledged the  letters.  We  used  to  manage  or 
mismanage  the  whole  affair,  fill  the 
library  with  chairs,  which  were  the  pro- 
perty of  the  Society,  and  issue  the  tickets. 

IS 


226  Ruskin 

I  became  aware  that  the  proceedings 
were  going  to  be  of  some  importance, 
from  the  extreme  anxiety  on  the  part  of 
masters  and  masters'  wives  to  get  tickets. 
'And  I  had  several  invitations  transmitted 
to  me  to  be  sent  on  to  Mr.  Kuskin,  for 
him  to  dine  and  sleep — one  in  particular 
from  the  Headmaster.  These  I  sent  on  to 
him,  but  he  declined  them  all.  He  said  lie 
would  drive  over  in  the  course  of  the  even- 
ing, and  must  go  away  again  when  the 
lecture  was  over;  and  that  he  would  like 
a  quiet  room  to  sit  in  for  a  short  rest  be- 
fore the  lecture;  but  that  he  was  ill,  and 
could  not  bear  the  strain  of  society.  I  ap- 
pealed to  the  Headmaster;  he  arranged  to 
have  a  fire  in  a  room  called  Chambers,  in 
College,  where  Master's  meetings  were  held, 
and  where  he  interviewed  offenders;  and  he 
said  he  would  send  in  a  cup  of  coffee  for 
Ruskin.  I  thought  no  more  of  the  matter. 
About  an  hour  before  the  meeting,  I  got 
a  message  from  the  Matron  to  the  effect 
that  a  gentleman  wished  to  see  me.  I  went 


A  Study  in  Personality       227 

down,  and  there  standing  in  the  Matron's 
room  was  the  great  man  himself.  I  can 
see  him  as  if  it  were  yesterday.  He  was 
slim  in  form,  but  much  bowed.  He  was 
clean-shaven  then,  and  wore  his  hair  rather 
long;  his  whole  dress  was  very  old- 
fashioned  to  my  eyes.  He  was  dressed  in 
evening  clothes,  and  I  remember  his  low- 
cut  waistcoat,  his  high-collared  coat,  the 
long  linen  cuffs  that  came  half  over  his 
hands,  his  white  gloves.  He  had  with  him 
bundles  of  papers,  and  I  remember  the 
piercing  look  of  his  eyes.  He  looked  worn 
and  melancholy — he  was  on  the  verge  of  a 
bad  illness — but  his  manner  was  delight- 
fully courteous  and  natural.  I  took  him 
to  Chambers,  and  he  asked  me  to  sit  down 
for  a  few  minutes  and  talk.  He  seated 
himself  in  the  Headmaster's  chair  with  his 
elbow's  on  the  arms,  sipped  his  coffee,  and 
asked  me  some  questions.  He  was  vexed, 
I  remember,  to  find  that  I  had  not  put  his 
pictures  in  the  library,  and  expressed  his 
vexation  rather  pettishly;  but  he  talked  on 


228  Ruskin 

very  gently  and  kindly,  asked  me  about  tlie 
Society  and  about  the  books  we  read — and 
I  remember  the  pleasure  which  he  ex- 
pressed when  he  found  I  had  read  the  whole 
of  Walter  Scott ;  then  he  said  suddenly  that 
he  must  rest.  It  appeared  to  me  rather  an 
affectation  at  the  time.  I  did  not  know  the 
meaning  of  the  word  tired,  except  in  con- 
nection with  football,  and  imagined  older 
people  to  be  impervious  to  all  such  weak- 
nesses. I  can  see  the  look  of  him  as  I  left 
the  room,  with  his  face  bowed  down  over 
his  hand.  Then  I  came  back  to  fetch 
him  just  before  the  lecture;  and  I  shall 
never  forget  the  clear  and  beautiful  tones 
of  his  expressive  voice,  and  the  first  lovely 
paragraph  which  now  stands  at  the  begin- 
ning of  one  of  his  books.  The  lecture  was 
quite  informal.  Indeed,  for  the  only  time 
in  his  life,  he  had  forgotten  to  bring  his 
MS.  Sometimes  he  read  a  few  words, 
sometimes  he  talked;  and  he  grew  animated 
every  now  and  then,  though  at  first  he  had 
seemed  weary  and  ill  at  ease.  At  the  end 


A  Study  in  Personality       229 

he  said  a  few  words  in  reply  to  a  vote 
of  thanks,  shook  hands  with  a  few  friends, 
and  gave  me  a  little  sign  with  his  head.  I 
walked  out  with  him.  There  was  a  closed 
carriage  at  the  door.  He  asked  me  to  see 
that  the  papers  were  put  in  the  library  for 
reference,  said  a  very  cordial  good-bye,  and 
drove  quickly  away. 


VI 


BY  1881  Ruskin  had  apparently  recovered 
his  health.  Then  he  had  another  brain  at- 
tack, but  emerged  with  renewed  vigour,  and 
found  abundance  of  new  things  to  say. 

"  The  moment  I  got  your  letter  to-day," 
he  wrote  to  an  old  friend,  "  recommending 
me  not  to  write  books  ...  I  took  out  the 
last  proof  of  Proserpina  and  worked  for 
an  hour  and  a  half  on  it;  and  have  been 
translating  some  St.  Benedict  material 
since,  with  much  comfort  and  sense  of  get- 
ting— as  I  said — head  to  sea  again."  He 
took  a  long  tour  abroad,  and  finally  was 
able  to  resume  his  Professorship.  Sir  W. 
B.  Richmond  retired  in  his  favour.  The 
result  was  a  more  extraordinary  concourse 
230 


A  Study  in  Personality          231 

of  listeners  than  ever.  He  lectured  on  the 
Art  of  England.  But  though  his  lectures 
contained  some  wonderful  criticism,  and 
some  beautiful  eloquence — there  is  a  splen- 
did and  well-known  passage  on  the  art  of 
Rossetti — yet  he  seemed  to  have  lost  the 
power  of  connected  thought;  he  discon- 
certed his  hearers  too  by  producing  the 
sketches  of  amateur  artists,  and  declaring 
that  no  hand  like  them  had  been  put  to 
paper  since  Lippi  and  Leonardo.  At  a  lec- 
ture, for  instance,  given  in  Kensington  he 
said :  "  I  have  never  until  to-day  dared 
to  call  my  friends  and  my  neighbours  to- 
gether to  rejoice  with  me  over  my  recov- 
ered good  or  rekindled  hope.  Both  in  fear 
and  much  thankfulness  I  have  done  so  now ; 
yet  not  to  tell  you  of  any  poor  little  piece 
of  upgathered  silver  of  my  own,  but  to 
show  you  the  fine  gold  which  has  been 
strangely  trusted  to  me,  and  which  before 
was  a  treasure  hid  in  a  mountain  field  in 
Tuscany."  This  majestic  encomium  was 
simply  to  introduce  some  pen-and-ink  draw- 


232  Ruskin 

ings  by  a  gifted  amateur,  Miss  Alexander, 
authoress  of  the  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany. 
But  his  excitability  was  after  this  date 
a  dangerous  and  trying  symptom  of  his 
condition.  A  salient  instance  is  his  reply 
to  a  question  addressed  to  him  by  the 
Liberal  party  at  Glasgow  University,  when 
he  was  asked  in  1880  to  stand  for  the  Lord 
Rectorship.  He  was  asked  the  plain  ques- 
tion whether  he  was  a  supporter  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  or  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  replied : 

What,  in  the  devil's  name,  have  you  to  do 
with  either  Mr.  D'Israeli  or  Mr.  Gladstone? 
You  are  students  at  the  University,  and  have 
no  more  business  with  politics  than  you  have 
with  rat-catching.  Had  you  ever  read  ten 
words  of  mine  with  understanding,  you  would 
have  known  that  I  care  no  more  either  for 
Mr.  D'Israeli  or  Mr.  Gladstone  than  for  two 
old  bagpipes  with  the  drones  going  by  steam, 
but  that  I  hate  all  Liberalism  as  I  do  Beelze- 
bub, and  that,  with  Carlyle,  I  stand,  we  two 
alone  now  in  England,  for  God  and  the  Queen. 

And  I  may  here  perhaps  add  the  famous 
letter  which  he  once  wrote  in  reply  to  a 


A  Study  in  Personality       233 

request  that  he  would  subscribe  to  pay  off 
a  debt  on  a  chapel  at  Richmond : 

SIR,,— I  am  scornfully  amused  at  your  appeal 
to  me,  of  all  people  in  the  world  the  precisely 
least  likely  to  give  you  a  farthing!  My  first 
word  to  all  men  and  boys  who  care  to  hear 
me  is :  "  Don't  get  into  debt.  Starve  and  go 
to  heaven — but  don't  borrow.  Try  first  beg- 
ging,— I  don't  mind,  if  it's  really  needful, 
stealing!  But  don't  buy  things  you  can't  pay 
for!" 

And  of  all  manner  of  debtors,  pious  people 
building  churches  they  can't  pay  for  are  the 
most  detestable  nonsense  to  me.  Can't  you 
preach  and  pray  behind  the  hedges — or  in  a 
sandpit — or  a  coal-hole — first? 

And  of  all  manner  of  churches  thus  idiotic- 
ally built,  iron  churches  are  the  damnablest 
to  me. 

And  of  all  the  sects  of  believers  in  any 
ruling  spirit — Hindoos,  Turks,  Feather  Idola- 
ters, and  Mumbo  Jumbo,  Log  and  Fire  wor- 
shippers— who  want  churches,  your  modern 
English  Evangelical  sect  is  the  most  absurd, 
and  entirely  objectionable  and  unendurable  to 
me!  All  which  they  might  very  easily  have 
found  out  from  my  books — any  other  sort  of 
sect  would! — before  bothering  me  to  write  it 
to  them. 


234  Ruskin 

Ever,  nevertheless,  arid  in  all  this  saying, 
your  faithful  servant, 

JOHN  ROSKIN. 

But  he  could  not  understand  why  his 
vehemence  should  be  resented,  or  ridiculed 
— "  the  moment  I  have  to  scold  people  they 
say  I  am  crazy,"  he  said  pathetically.  The 
end  of  his  public  life  was  not  far  off.  He 
struggled  through  his  Oxford  lectures,  and 
was  prevailed  upon  to  give  some  readings 
of  his  previous  works  in  the  place  of  three 
rancorous  and  rambling  discourses  which 
he  had  prepared.  He  continued  to  work 
feverishly  and  unwisely,  taking  up  one 
thing  after  another  and  dropping  them  in 
turn.  A  vote  was  passed  at  Oxford  to  en- 
dow a  physiological  laboratory,  and  vivi- 
section ;  he  resigned  his  Professorship  at 
once,  and  left  Oxford  for  ever.  He  was 
persuaded  to  begin  his  autobiography,  to 
put  together  scattered  fragments  of  early 
reminiscences  which  had  appeared  in  Fors, 
and  this  for  a  time  restored  him  to  tran- 
quillity. The  result  is,  as  I  have  said,  one 


A  Study  in  Personality       235 

of  the  most  beautiful  books  lie  ever  wrote, 
PrcBterita,  in  which,  apart  from  all  con- 
troversy and  schemes  of  reform,  he  traced 
in  limpid  and  delicious  sentences  the  memo- 
ries of  his  childhood.  The  stream  had 
run  clear  at  last,  and  the  book  must  stand 
for  ever  as  one  of  the  finest  monuments 
of  tender  reminiscence  with  the  dew  of  the 
morning  and  of  the  evening  upon  it.  And 
he  showed  too  in  his  book  an  art  so  per- 
fect as  to  be  absolutely  oblivious  of  itself, 
issuing  in  what  seems  an  ingenuous  ecstasy 
of  pure  presentment. 

But  he  was  not  able  to  finish  it;  he  had 
planned  out  the  whole  book.  He  went  down 
to  Seascale  and  tried  to  work.  "  But  now 
he  seemed,"  says  Professor  Collingwood, 
"  lost  among  the  papers  scattered  on  his 
table;  he  could  not  fix  his  mind  upon  them 
and  turned  from  one  subject  to  another  in 
despair,  and  yet  patient  and  kindly  to  those 
with  him  whose  help  he  could  no  longer 
use,  and  who  dared  not  show — though  he 
could  not  but  guess  it — how  heart-breaking 


236  Ruskin 

it  was."  So  he  put  it  all  aside,  and  wrote 
one  last  chapter  to  record  the  truest  com- 
panionship of  his  life,  "  Joanna's  Care." 

The  clouds  swept  down  on  him  again. 
And  at  last  he  saw  that  his  work  was  done. 
He  was  seventy,  and  he  had  more  volumes 
to  his  credit  than  any  living  English  writer. 
He  determined  to  wait  for  the  end,  little 
guessing  how  long  that  waiting  would  be; 
he  steadily  refused  every  kind  of  work  or 
mental  exertion,  and  was  rewarded  for  it 
by  a  tranquillity  of  life  and  spirit  such  as 
he  had  never  before  enjoyed.  He  attended 
to  a  little  business,  dictated  a  few  letters, 
and  even  allowed  his  early  poems  to  be  re- 
printed. He  had  now  given  away  the  whole 
of  his  capital,  and  his  only  income  was 
from  his  books,  but  that  was  a  large  one, 
and  enabled  him  to  live  as  he  wished,  and 
to  exercise  a  large  generosity  as  well. 
Honour  came  to  him — strangely  ironical 
rewards — and  there  now  grew  up  about 
him  a  mysterious  reverence,  for  men  began 
to  see  through  the  vehemence  and  the  fury 


A  Study  in  Personality       237 

of  his  later  expression,  to  realise  how 
purely  and  generously  he  had  lived,  how 
loftily  he  had  schemed  and  thought,  and 
how  great  was  his  legacy  to  the  world. 
His  eightieth  birthday  was  the  signal  for 
a  great  outburst  of  praise  and  congratula- 
tions— flowers,  letters,  telegrams,  addresses 
poured  in.  But  he  was  past  caring  for  such 
things.  He  crept  about  quietly,  strolled 
in  the  open  air,  had  a  few  letters  read 
to  him,  and  even  indicated  replies.  He 
spoke  little.  Mr.  Gordon  Wordsworth,  the 
grandson  of  the  poet,  has  told  me  how 
in  these  latter  days  he  used  to  go  to  see 
the  old  man.  He  was  received  in  silence 
with  a  warm  handshake  and  a  smile. 
He  would  begin  to  talk  about  anything 
which  he  thought  might  interest  Buskin, 
particularly  about  foreign  travel.  "  You 
can  imagine  how  I  felt,"  he  said,  "venti- 
lating my  extremely  crude  ideas  about  pic- 
tures and  buildings  to  the  great  art-critic." 
Ruskin  used  to  nod  and  smile — and  then 
suddenly  he  would  kindle  into  definite 


238  Ruskin 

interest,  and  let  fall  some  quiet  criticism 
or  memorable  dictum.  His  mind  seemed  as 
strong  as  ever,  but  remote,  lost  in  some 
incommunicable  dream,  and  not  easily  to 
be  recalled.  There  was  no  trace  of  delu- 
sion or  wandering  intellect;  only  he  could 
not  be  roused.  He  seemed,  said  Professor 
Collingwood,  "  like  the  aged  Queen  Aud 
in  the  saga,  who  rose  late  and  went  to 
bed  early,  and  if  any  one  asked  after  her 
health,  she  answered  sharply." 

Of  Mr.  Buskin's  closing  years  at  Brant- 
wood  Professor  Collingwood  gives  us  some 
touching  pictures  in  his  Life.  I  will  con- 
tent myself  with  the  following  extract: 

Walking  out  had  become  a  greater  weari- 
ness to  him,  and  he  had  to  submit  to  the 
humiliation  of  a  bath-chair.  To  save  himself 
even  the  labour  of  creeping  down  to  his  study, 
he  sat  usually  in  the  turret-room  upstairs, 
next  to  his  bed-chamber,  but  still  with  the 
look  of  health  in  his  face,  and  the  fire  in  his 
eyes  quite  unconquered.  He  would  listen  while 
Baxter  [his  valet]  read  the  news  to  him,  fol- 
lowing public  events  with  interest,  or  while 


A  Study  in  Personality       239 

Mrs.  Severn  or  Miss  Severn  read  stories,  novel 
after  novel;  but  always  liking  old  favourites 
best,  and  never  anything  that  was  unhappy. 
Some  pet  books  he  would  pore  over,  or  drowse 
over,  by  the  hour.  The  last  of  these  was  one 
in  which  he  had  a  double  interest,  for  it  was 
about  ships  of  war,  and  it  was  written  by 
the  kinsman  of  a  dear  friend.  Some  of  the 
artists  he  had  loved  and  helped  had  failed 
him  or  left  him,  but  Burne-Jones  was  always 
true.  One  night,  going  up  to  bed,  the  old  man 
stopped  long  to  look  at  the  photograph  from 
Philip  Burne-Jones's  portrait  of  his  father. 
"  That 's  my  dear  brother  Ned,"  he  said,  nod- 
ding good-bye  to  the  picture  as  he  went.  Next 
night  the  great  artist  died,  and  of  all  the 
many  losses  of  these  later  years  this  one  was 
the  hardest  to  bear. 

His  life  just  touched  the  last  year  of 
the  century.  On  the  20th  of  January,  1900, 
after  an  attack  of  influenza,  he  suddenly 
failed,  and  fell  softly  asleep  as  the  sunset 
came  out  beyond  the  fells. 

He  was  buried  at  Coniston ;  and  perhaps 
of  all  the  tributes  he  received  in  death  the 
truest  and  best  was  a  little  wreath  of  com- 
mon flowers  sent  by  the  local  tailor,  with 


240  Ruskin 

the  words  inscribed :     "  There  was  a  man 
sent  from  God,  and  his  name  was  John." 


Let  me  try  then  in  a  few  words,  now 
that  I  have  painted  the  outer  portrait  of 
the  man,  to  sketch  the  inner  portrait  of 
the  spirit,  which  is  a  far  older  and  a  far 
more  lasting  thing  than  the  mortal  body 
in  which  for  a  few  years  it  is  bound. 
Ruskin  came  into  the  world  gifted  with 
the  most  intense  power  of  ocular  percep- 
tion and  observation.  That  runs  through 
his  whole  work.  In  his  delightful  auto- 
biography you  can  read  how  the  little  boy, 
with  no  toys  to  speak  of,  spent  hours  in 
counting  the  bricks  of  the  opposite  house- 
fronts,  and  tracing  the  patterns  of  the  car- 
pet on  which  he  crawled;  and  how  delightful 
to  him  was  the  sight  of  the  pure  stream  of 
water,  that  rose  so  mysteriously  from  the 
ground  when  the  water-cart  man  unlocked 
the  springs  with  his  key,  and  filled  his 


A  Study  in  Personality       241 

wheeled  tank.  And  thus  Ruskin  kept  all 
his  life  long  the  power  of  looking  into 
things  and  seeing  their  smallest  details;  so 
that  when  he  says  that  he  sees  this  and 
that  in  a  picture,  which  it  is  impossible  for 
ordinary  eyes  to  detect,  we  may  at  least 
be  sure  that  he  had  looked  longer  at  what 
he  is  describing  than  we  are  ever  likely  to 
do,  and  with  a  patience,  as  a  German  critic 
once  wrote,  that  verges  upon  frenzy.  And 
beside  that  he  had  an  intense  and  sensuous 
pleasure  in  forms  and  curves,  in  tints  and 
colours;  across  the  texture  of  the  world, 
which  seems  so  meaningless  to  some  of  us, 
his  swift  brain  traced  subtle  outlines  and 
viewless  perspectives:  and  for  him  too  the 
whole  of  a  scene  flushed  and  glowed  in  a 
way  that  we  perhaps  can  hardly  compre- 
hend, or  lost  itself  in  weft  of  opalescent 
mist  and  shadows  of  ethereal  tincture.  The 
vocabulary  of  colour  is  employed  from  end 
to  end  by  Ruskin,  and  never  either  vaguely 
or  imaginatively.  And  then  too  he  had  the 
same  sort  of  an  eye  for  words,  so  that  the 


1 6 


242  Ruskin 

very  winds  and  skies  of  earth  breathed 
themselves  into  music.  That  was  his  out- 
fit. But  beyond  all  that  he  had  a  brain 
of  incredible  agility,  which  leapt  in  a  flash 
from  what  was  beautiful  to  what  was  stern, 
and,  we  may  be  thankful,  from  what  was 
solemn  to  what  was  humorous.  There  is 
seldom  any  strain  or  tension  about  his  writ- 
ing; for  he  relieves  it  almost  instinctively 
just  when  the  pressure  becomes  acute,  by 
a  swift  turn  of  irony  or  pathos  which 
refreshes  the  spirit. 

He  suffered  perhaps  as  much  as  he  gained 
from  the  extremely  secluded  character  of 
his  life.  But  I  think  his  guarded  child- 
hood and  boyhood  were  perhaps  a  benefit 
to  him.  He  did  indeed  concentrate  his  en- 
ergies too  much ;  but  he  came  into  the  larger 
world,  in  spite  of  his  inner  dogmatism,  with 
a  curiously  beautiful  sort  of  humility,  an 
eager  desire  to  win,  and  a  courtesy  which 
made  him  always  put  out  his  powers.  Some 
one  once  said  of  him  that  it  was  the  most 
touching  thing  in  the  world  to  see  Buskin, 


A  Study  in  Personality       243 

when  he  was  already  a  well-known  man, 
being  snubbed  and  bidden  to  hold  his  tongue 
by  his  old  mother,  and  the  gracious  sweet- 
ness with  which  he  obeyed.  But  above  all 
things  he  had  a  temperament  which  is 
called,  and  with  what  mistaken  deprecia- 
tion I  will  not  stop  to  consider,  a  feminine 
temperament.  It  meant  in  Ruskin's  case 
an  extreme  sensitiveness,  an  intense  desire 
to  be  in  affectionate  and  emotional  contact 
with  his  circle;  a  pretty  touch  of  vanity, 
which  was  all  the  more  harmless  because 
he  so  constantly  confessed  it  and  deplored 
it;  a  great  love  of  quiet,  well-ordered,  cosy 
ways  of  life,  and  a  generosity  that ,  was 
never  ashamed  of  confessing  its  fault  with 
tears.  His  letters,  in  their  tenderness,  their 
emotional  quality,  their  caressing  fondness, 
are  such  as  many  a  bluff  and  sensible  man 
may  despise  and  dislike.  But  for  all  that 
it  is  that  kind  of  secret  current  of  affection 
that  sets  from  father  to  child,  from  brother 
to  sister,  from  friend  to  friend,  which  binds 
up  the  wounds  of  the  world  and  makes 


244  Ruskin 

renunciation  a  more  beautiful  thing  even 
than  success. 

And  then — because  I  do  not  mean  this 
to  be  a  flattering  portrait — there  was  in 
him  what  I  have  already  described,  a  real, 
deep-seated,  hard  belief  in  his  own  absolute 
Tightness  and  justice;  and  I  do  not  dis- 
guise it.  The  greatest  men  of  all  have  seen 
clearly  enough  the  eternal  distinction  be- 
tween right  and  wrong,  generous  and  mean, 
kindly  and  cruel.  But  they  have  lost  them- 
selves more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger  at  the 
poison  of  sin,  and  have  seen  the  beautiful 
creature  which  lies,  we  dare  to  hope,  within 
the  foulest  and  most  ugly  human  manifes- 
tation. But  Ruskin  did  not  look  deep 
enough  for  that.  He  talked  too  much 
about  scolding  and  punishing  people.  As 
Lady  Ambrose  says  in  the  New  Republic, 
at  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Herbert's  great 
harangue: 

What  a  dreadful  blowing-up  Mr.  Herbert 
gave  us  last  night,  didn't  he?  Now  that,  you 
know,  I  think  is  all  very  well  in  a  sermon; 


A  Study  in  Personality       245 

but  in  a  lecture,  where  the  things  are  supposed 
to  be  taken  more  or  less  literally,  I  think  it 
is  a  little  out  of  place. 

It  is  this,  it  may  frankly  and  sorrowfully 
be  confessed,  that  spoils  much  of  his  work 
— the  implication  that  if  you  do  not  agree 
with  him  you  are  certainly  stupid  and 
probably  vicious.  Some  have  said  that  he 
learnt  this  from  the  Puritanism  of  his 
father  and  mother,  and  their  contempt  for 
weak-minded  and  disorderly  people — but  it 
is  something  far  deeper  than  that.  It 
might  have  been  a  little  fostered  in  the 
still  atmosphere  of  his  childhood,  by  the 
sight  of  a  father  and  mother,  whom  he 
knew  to  be  kind  and  just,  claiming  to  be 
so  certain  in  their  condemnations.  But  if 
he  himself  had  not  had  a  taste  for  fault- 
finding, he  would  have  grown  to  recoil 
from  it  all  the  more  at  the  nearer  touch 
of  it — for  in  the  lives  of  great  men  it  is 
true  to  say  that  they  often  grow  great,  so 
to  speak,  by  contraries,  and  learn  from 
early  influences  quite  as  much  what  to 


246  Ruskin 

mistrust  as  what  to  admire.  I  have  often 
wondered  whether  in  those  last  broken  years 
of  silence  and  musing,  he  was  not  often 
being  sorry  in  a  childlike  way  for  his 
great  fault,  his  own  great  fault,  and  per- 
haps in  that  happy  penitence  which  is 
the  joy  of  the  angels.  I  would  not  make 
light  of  this  harsh  strain  in  him,  and  if 
in  a  sense  it  was  the  blemish  in  his  mind, 
it  was  at  least  the  cause  of  the  heavenly 
and  noble  struggle  which  he  fought  out  day 
by  day. 

But  no  one  could  have  gathered  round 
him,  as  Ruskin  did,  the  almost  passionate 
affection,  in  which  there  was  always  some- 
thing of  compassion,  of  so  many  wise  and 
noble  men  and  women;  and  one  can  for- 
give, with  that  sort  of  forgiveness  that  is 
three  parts  admiration,  a  fault  which  after 
all  was  lit  by  generous  fires,  and  which 
was  the  shadow  cast  upon  his  words  and 
deeds  by  the  blaze  of  spirit  with  which 
he  loved  all  that  was  true  and  pure  and 
beautiful. 


A  Study  in  Personality       247 
3 

Now  in  dealing  with  this  strange  and 
beautiful  life,  so  sharply  divided  into  sad- 
ness and  delight,  this  character  at  once  so 
noble  and  so  narrow,  so  intense  and  yet  so 
yielding,  I  want  to  leave  one  point  very 
clearly  in  your  minds.  The  interest  of 
Euskin's  life  is  the  interest  of  a  person- 
ality, and  I  want  you  to  try  to  regard  him 
in  that  light,  and  not  either  as  a  prophet,  or 
a  reformer,  or  an  art-critic,  or  a  writer.  He 
was  all  these  things  by  turns — they  were 
but  the  guises  which  this  restless  and  ar- 
dent temperament  assumed.  As  a  prophet, 
he  was  unbalanced  and  unconvincing,  be- 
cause he  had  depth  rather  than  width  of 
view.  He  did  not  see  the  whole  problem. 
He  saw  clearly  enough  into  the  hearts  of 
like-minded  people,  but  he  was  essentially 
a  partisan,  and  condemned  what  he  did  not 
understand  as  severely  as  he  condemned 
what  he  hated.  He  took,  from  his  educa- 
tion and  his  sheltered  life,  a  meagre  VICAV 


248  Ruskin 

of  the  world.  He  had  little  sympathy  with 
robust  strength,  and  wide  tracts  of  human 
nature,  at  its  bluntest  and  soundest,  were 
entirely  obscure  to  him.  And  thus  his  re- 
probation was  so  extravagant  that  it  made 
no  appeal,  not  even  the  appeal  of  shame  and 
terror,  to  those  whom  he  inveighed  against 
most  fiercely.  Then  too  he  did  not  even  do 
justice  to  his  age;  he  overlooked  one  of  the 
best  and  strongest  forces  of  the  time — the 
resolute  search  for  truth,  the  stern  de- 
termination of  the  scientific  spirit  not  to 
generalise  till  it  has  investigated.  He  went 
wrong  himself  in  every  department  of  his 
work,  from  his  passion  for  generalisation 
and  his  acquiescence  in  incomplete  investi- 
gation. What  made  his  protests  ineffectual 
was  that  he  believed  himself  to  have  a  per- 
fectly analytical  mind.  His  mind  was  in- 
deed analytical,  when  he  applied  it  to 
questions  which  he  understood,  and  to  work- 
ers with  whom  he  sympathised.  But  he 
had  no  notion  of  just  comparison,  and  when 
his  sympathy  was  not  enlisted  he  could  not 


A  Study  in  Personality       249 

even  analyse.  He  had  the  power  of  putting 
vague  personal  preferences  into  language 
superficially  exact,  and  this  was  a  terrible 
snare  to  him  and  to  his  followers,  wrho  be- 
lieved that  they  were  getting  logical  rea- 
sons when  they  were  only  getting  instinctive 
predilections.  Yet  I  am  far  from  saying 
that  as  a  prophet  his  work  was  thrown 
away.  He  was  no  ascetic,  as  I  have  said, 
and  thus  he  was  able  to  see  the  dangers 
of  the  materialism  that  is  not  uplifted  by 
the  concurrence  of  the  soul.  But  he  felt 
that  the  invariable  comfort  in  which  he 
lived  to  some  extent  invalidated  his  mes- 
sage. "  If  I  had  lived  in  a  garret,"  he  once 
wrote,  "  then  I  could  have  preached  that 
Queen  Victoria  should  do  the  same."  But, 
as  I  have  said  before,  he  accepted  with  a 
sort  of  unquestioning  loyalty  the  precise 
standard  of  material  luxury  in  which  he 
had  been  himself  brought  up,  and  he  re- 
garded any  extension  or  development  of 
this  as  base  and  degrading.  Yet  he  was 
here  in  the  main  right,  because  he  saw  that 


250  Ruskin 

the  bane  of  the  age  is  its  impatience  of 
simplicity,  its  worship  of  success,  its  pre- 
ference of  comfort,  and  its  mistaking  the 
quality  of  pleasure. 

As  a  reformer  he  made  even  worse  ship- 
wreck, partly  because  he  was  but  little 
acquainted  with  the  precise  condition  of 
affairs  which  he  undertook  to  reform,  and 
partly  because  he  tried  to  impose  his  own 
private  and  quite  unimportant  tastes  upon 
the  persons  whom  he  claimed  as  disciples. 
The  men  as  a  rule  who  have  made  disciples, 
and  have  worked  out  an  ideal  of  practical 
life,  like  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  Francis  of 
Assisi,  Ignatius  Loyola,  have  been  men  who 
on  the  one  hand  claimed  and  practised  an 
abnegation  of  conventional  comforts — a 
process  which  has  a  very  distinct  pleasure 
for  human  beings — but  whose  consistency, 
personal  charm,  and  authoritativeness  sus- 
tained and  rewarded  their  followers.  But 
Ruskin  made  no  sweep  of  comforts,  no 
simplification  of  conditions;  he  merely  at- 
tempted to  forbid  the  luxuries  for  which 


A  Study  in  Personality       251 

he  bad  no  taste,  while  his  consistency  was 
incomplete  and  his  demand  for  personal  au- 
thority small.  He  had  not  the  gift  of  mak- 
ing his  personal  approval  the  one  supreme 
reward  coveted  by  his  followers— he  could 
not  exalt  himself  into  a  little  Deity;  and 
thus  he  was  called  Master  mainly  by  men 
who  were  not  in  personal  touch  with  him. 
He  said  once:  "No  true  disciple  of  mine 
can  ever  be  a  Ruskinian.  He  will  follow 
not  me,  but  the  instincts  of  his  own  soul 
and  the  guidance  of  his  Creator."  But  for 
all  that,  though  he  had  not  the  gift  of  the 
maker  of  definite  institutions,  we  must  not 
make  the  mistake  of  underestimating  his 
work  as  a  reformer.  He  did  see  into  the 
weakness  of  commercialism,  and  he  grasped 
the  fact  that  the  only  real  socialism  must 
be  based  on  individualism.  He  saw  that 
the  mechanical  theory  of  labour  and  of 
trade  competition  was  essentially  degrad- 
ing, because  it  did  not  evoke  the  gifts  of 
the  individual,  and  rewarded  shrewdness 
rather  than  industry.  And  here  he  threw 


252  Ruskin 

his  whole  weight  into  the  right  scale.  His 
grasp  of  economical  details  was  unsound, 
but  his  insight  into  true  economical  prin- 
ciples was  clear  enough,  because  he  saw  that 
the  mistake  made  was  to  treat  it  all  as  an 
exact  and  pure  science,  instead  of  a  science 
which  must  take  account  of  psychological 
principles. 

As  an  art-critic  he  certainly  established 
a  new  tradition,  and  the  very  narrowness 
of  his  technical  knowledge  was  probably 
one  of  the  conditions  of  his  success.  He 
was  dealing  with  a  nation  which  is  not 
innately  artistic,  which  has  a  mild  and 
rather  pathetic  desire  to  care  for  art,  a 
nation  which  can  produce,  in  painting, 
landscapes  of  extraordinary  beauty  and  por- 
traits of  wonderful  animation  and  delicacy, 
but  which  has  failed  in  most  other  kinds 
of  delineation.  And  in  architecture,  which 
was  his  other  great  province,  he  was  deal- 
ing with  a  nation  which  once,  it  seems,  pos- 
sessed a  tradition  of  its  own,  and  a  power 
of  designing  great  buildings,  but  which  had 


A  Study  in  Personality       253 

lost  its  firmness  of  conception  and  origin- 
ality of  design,  and  had  become  little  more 
than  an  accomplished  copyist,  or  an  in- 
genious combiner  of  purloined  detail. 

In  the  region  of  painting,  he  persuaded 
the  languid  coteries  to  abjure  an  academic 
tradition  of  admiration,  and  a  mawkish 
tradition  of  presentation,  in  favour  of  a 
different  but  still  narrow  scheme  of  pre- 
ferences, and  a  servile  acceptance  of  un- 
questionable greatness.  He  gave  Turner 
an  extravagant  place,  and  he  held  out  a 
hand  to  that  singular  revolt  known  as  Pre- 
Raphaelitism,  the  impulse  of  which  has 
passed  into  the  dignity  of  upholstery,  and 
has  done  little  more  than  infect  native  art 
with  a  precious  kind  of  medievalism. 

But  here  again  he  did  great  work.  He 
set  the  public  thinking  about  art,  and  al- 
most persuaded  it  that  it  cared  for  art. 
He  made  art  serious  and  he  made  it 
respected;  and  here  his  teaching  may  yet 
bear  fruit,  though  it  was  disfigured  by  his 
ethical  bias,  which  confused  the  truth  of 


254  Ruskin 

things  by  trying  to  refer  two  perfectly 
separate  impulses — the  moral  and  the  art- 
istic— to  one  basis.  I  myself  believe  that 
the  English  feeling  for  art  is  a  very  placid 
sentiment,  with  little  that  is  passionate 
about  it;  but  though  it  has  not  yet  at- 
tained much  vitality,  it  may  develop  in  the 
future:  and  even  if  Ruskin  did  not  sow 
the  seed,  he  at  least  hoed  up  the  fallow. 

And  then  as  a  writer  he  can  hardly  be 
said  to  have  established  a  tradition,  because 
his  art  depended  upon  so  intimate  and  per- 
sonal a  charm.  I  myself  am  thankful  that 
he  did  not  establish  a  tradition  in  this 
respect — for  while  such  a  tradition  is  a 
great  sign  of  commanding  influence  in  a 
writer,  it  is  a  sign  of  a  corresponding  weak- 
ness in  his  followers.  Writers  must  learn 
to  express  their  thoughts  in  their  own  way ; 
and  it  is  better  to  borrow  thoughts  than 
to  purloin  a  medium.  The  art  of  literary 
imitation  is  a  very  easy  one,  and  needs 
only  a  very  second-rate  gift.  Small  wonder 
that  we  Englishmen,  trained  on  so  narrow 


A  Study  in  Personality       255 

a  classical  tradition,  should  be  so  prone  to 
rank  literary  imitation  high.  Boys  who 
have  been  taught  that  the  best  Latin  verse 
and  prose  is  the  most  ingenious  cento  of 
phrases,  not  imitated  but  transferred  from 
classical  writers,  may  be  excused  if  they 
rank  the  gift  of  imitation  above  that  of 
forcible  expression.  I  mean  to  discuss  the 
style  of  Buskin  elsewhere,  but  I  hold  that 
one  of  his  supreme  felicities  was  that  his 
mind  was  not  cramped  by  a  classical  edu- 
cation. I  do  not  undervalue  that  education 
for  other  purposes;  it  lends  some  exactness 
of  thought  and  some  terseness  of  expres- 
sion to  practical  minds.  But  Ruskin  is 
only  one  of  the  notable  instances  which  go 
far  to  prove  that  the  greatest  writers  of 
the  century — Keats,  Walter  Scott,  Car- 
lyle,  Browning — were  men  who  hardly 
came  under  classical  influences  at  all;  while 
other  great  writers — Wordsworth,  Tenny- 
son, Byron,  and  Shelley — obtained  no  dis- 
tinction in  academical  exercises;  and  the 
few  great  writers  whom  our  universities 


256  Ruskin 

rewarded,  such  as  Matthew  Arnold,  New- 
man, and  Pater,  can  hardly  be  ranked 
among  the  leading  literary  influences  of 
the  century. 

And  let  me  here  add  the  strange  and 
somewhat  whimsical  summary  which  Rus- 
kin gave  of  his  own  life-work,  a  short  time 
before  he  sank  into  the  final  silence: 

For  in  rough  approximation  of  date  near- 
est to  the  completion  of  the  several  pieces  of 
my  past  work,  as  they  are  built  one  on  the 
other, — at  twenty,  I  wrote  Modern  Painters; 
at  thirty,  The  Stones  of  Venice;  at  forty,  Unto 
this  Last;  at  fifty  the  Inaugural  Oxford  Lec- 
tures; and  if  Fors  Clavigera  is  ever  finished  as 
I  mean — it  will  mark  the  mind  I  had  at  sixty ; 
and  leave  me  in  my  seventh  day  of  life,  per- 
haps— to  rest.  For  the  code  of  all  I  had  to 
teach  will  then  be,  in  form,  as  it  is  at  this 
hour,  in  substance,  completed.  Modern  Paint- 
ers taught  the  claim  of  all  lower  nature  on 
the  hearts  of  men ;  of  the  rock,  and  wave,  and 
herb,  as  a  part  of  their  necessary  spirit  life;  in 
all  that  I  now  bid  you  to  do,  to  dress  the  earth 
and  keep  it,  I  am  fulfilling  what  I  then  began. 

The  Stones  of  Venice  taught  the  laws  of 
constructive  Art,  and  the  dependence  of  all 


A  Study  in  Personality       257 

human  work  or  edifice,  for  its  beauty,  on  the 
happy  life  of  the  workman;  Unto  this  Last 
taught  the  laws  of  that  life  itself,  and  its 
dependence  on  the  Sun  of  Justice;  the  In- 
augural Oxford  Lectures,  the  necessity  that 
it  should  be  led,  and  the  gracious  laws  of 
beauty  and  labour  recognised,  by  the  upper, 
no  less  than  the  lower,  classes  of  England; 
and  lastly,  Fors  Glavigera  has  declared  the 
relation  of  these  to  each  other,  and  the  only 
possible  conditions  of  peace  and  honour,  for 
low  and  high,  rich  and  poor,  together,  in  the 
holding  of  that  first  Estate,  under  the  only 
Despot,  God,  from  which  whoso  falls,  angel 
or  man,  is  kept,  not  mythically  or  disputably, 
but  here  in  visible  horror  of  chains  under  dark- 
ness to  the  judgment  of  the  great  day:  and 
in  keeping  which  service  is  perfect  freedom, 
and  inheritance  of  all  that  a  loving  Creator 
can  give  to  His  creatures,  and  an  immortal 
Father  to  His  children: 

This,  then,  is  the  message,  which,  knowing 
no  more  as  I  unfolded  the  scroll  of  it,  what 
next  would  be  written  there,  than  a  blade  of 
grass  knows  what  the  form  of  its  fruit  shall 
be,  I  have  been  led  on  year  by  year  to  speak, 
even  to  this  its  end.  

And  now  it  seems  to  me,  looking  back  over 
the  various  fragments  of  it  written  since  the 
year  1860,  Unto  this  Last,  Time  and  Tide, 

17 


258  Ruskin 

Munera  Pulvcris,  and  Eagle's  Nest,  together 
with  the  seven  years'  volumes  of  Fors  Cla- 
vigera,  that  it  has  been  clearly  enough  and  re- 
peatedly enough  spoken  for  those  who  will 
hear:  and  that,  after  such  indexed  summary 
of  it  as  I  may  be  able  to  give  in  the  remain- 
ing numbers  of  this  seventh  volume,  I  should 
set  aside  this  political  work  as  sufficiently 
done;  and  enter  into  my  own  rest,  and  your 
next  needed  service,  by  completing  the  bye- 
law  books  of  Botany  and  Geology  for  St. 
George's  Schools,  together  with  so  much  law 
of  art  as  it  may  be  possible  to  explain  or 
exhibit,  under  the  foul  conditions  of  the 
age. 


There  is  yet  another  point  on  which  stress 
must  be  laid,  and  that  is  Ruskin's  incredi- 
ble and  dangerous  industry;  as  he  once 
wrote:  "Life  without  industry  is  guilt; 
and  industry  without  art  is  brutality." 
Let  us  compare  him  with  his  great  con- 
temporary Carlyle,  in  whom  long  periods 
of  solid  diligence  alternated  with  long 
stretches  of  mournful  indolence.  Carlyle 
was  a  sayer  of  great  truths,  and  I  am  not 


A  Study  in  Personality       259 

so  mean  as  to  try  to  undervalue  Iris  splen- 
did service  to  Iris  generation.  But  Carlyle 
was  not  possessed  by  the  intense  desire  to 
do  tangible  and  practical  things  for  man- 
kind, though  he  said  that  a  solidly  built 
bridge  was  a  finer  and  a  holier  thing  than 
the  best  book  ever  written ;  and  there  is 
truth  in  the  humorous  words  of  Fitz- 
Gerald,  that  Carlyle  had  sat  pretty  com- 
fortably in  his  study  at  Chelsea,  scolding 
all  the  world  for  not  being  heroic,  and  yet 
not  very  precise  in  telling  them  how.  But 
the  record  of  Kuskin's  life  and  his  busy 
days  is  not  like  this.  He  was  consumed  by 
a  demon  of  activity.  Consider  the  sort  of 
day  which  he  used  to  spend  in  Venice,  ris- 
ing with  the  dawn,  drawing,  as  he  humor- 
ously said,  one  half  of  a  building  while  the 
masons  were  employed  in  pulling  down  the 
other  half,  taking  measurements,  noting 
details,  doing  this  for  ten  hours  at  a  stretch 
till  the  shadows  had  shifted;  then  going 
back  to  write,  read,  and  talk;  and  this  not 
once  or  twice  a  week,  but  day  by  day  for 


260  Ruskin 

months  together.  Remember  the  kind  of 
life  he  lived  in  Oxford,  talking,  lecturing, 
working,  teaching  in  his  drawing-school, 
and  then  going  back  to  his  home  to  work 
and  read,  with  an  endless  flood  of  letters 
pouring  in  upon  him  day  by  day,  which 
he  answered  fully,  patiently,  courteously, 
and  humorously,  never  taking  refuge  be- 
hind fixed  phrases,  but  putting  a  part  of 
himself  into  every  sentence  he  ever  penned. 
And  all  the  while  he  was  planning  mu- 
seums and  arranging  collections,  while  his 
researches  into  natural  things  were  not 
merely  a  poetical  contemplation  or  a  dilet- 
tante catching  of  effects,  but  hard  discrimi- 
nation and  careful  experiment.  I  do  not 
believe  that  there  was  ever  a  life  lived  of 
such  tremendous  activity,  and  none  of  it 
mechanical  toil,  but  heart-wasting  and 
brain-consuming  work.  The  wonder  is  not 
that  his  brain  gave  way,  but  that  it  did 
not  collapse  long  before.  Even  a  conversa- 
tion was  not  an  easy  thing  for  Ruskin. 
He  was  always  willing  to  see  and  talk  to 


A  Study  in  Personality        261 

strangers  as  well  as  friends;  lie  never  was 
absorbed  or  preoccupied,  but  he  put  his 
heart  into  his  talk;  he  never  declined  upon 
impressive  platitudes,  but  he  turned  on  the 
full  strength  of  his  mental  current,  what- 
ever was  his  need  of  silence  and  rest. 

He  has  by  some  been  shamefully  accused 
of  pose.  The  mischief  of  that  criticism  is 
that  there  is  something  in  it.  "  To  the 
vanity,"  he  once  wrote,  "  I  plead  guilty- 
no  man  is  more  intensely  vain  than  I  am; 
but  my  vanity  is  set  on  having  it  known 
of  me  that  I  am  a  good  master,  not  in 
having  it  said  of  me  that  I  am  a  smooth 
author.  My  vanity  is  never  more  wounded 
than  in  being  called  a  fine  writer,  meaning 
— that  nobody  need  mind  what  I  say." 

But  of  course  it  may  be  admitted  that 
in  the  case  of  all  men  who  live  for  and  in 
performance,  whether  it  be  on  sackbut  or 
dulcimer,  on  stage  or  in  pulpit,  with  brush 
or  pen,  it  is  impossible  to  eliminate  a  dash 
of  the  essential  mountebank — the  quality 
which,  reduced  to  its  lowest  formula,  may 


262  Ruskin 

be  summed  up  in  the  words,  "  See  me  do 
it !  "  and  the  child  who  began  by  saying  from 
his  nursery  pulpit  "  People,  be  good,"  was 
sure  on  occasion  to  say  more  than  he  knew, 
and  indeed  had  reason  to  be  thankful  if  he 
did  not  say  more  than  he  meant. 

But  the  essence  of  the  poseur  is  this,  that 
all  that  he  does  he  regards  from  the  point 
of  view,  not  of  the  effect  it  may  have  on 
others,  or  for  the  share  that  he  may  take 
in  the  service  of  the  world,  but  that  the 
echo  and  reflection  of  his  effectiveness  may 
come  back  to  him  from  the  mouths  and 
eyes  of  men,  like  the  airy  chords  which 
come  back  from  precipice  and  crag  at  the 
blast  of  some  Alpine  horn.  The  poseur  does 
not  desire  to  be  served,  but  to  be  known 
to  serve.  It  is  his  own  content,  and  not 
the  content  of  others  that  he  is  in  search 
of.  It  is  no  happiness  to  him  to  have  added 
to  the  peace  of  the  world,  if  he  is  unpraised 
and  unhonoured.  No  one  can  be  unaware 
of  the  comforting  warmth  of  fame,  earned 
or  unearned ;  but  that  was  not  what  Ruskin 


A  Study  in  Personality       263 

wanted.  And  it  is  a  vile  calumny  to  say 
that  he  worked  for  his  own  honour  and 
satisfaction.  He  desired  to  increase  and 
multiply  joy;  he  did  increase  it  a  hundred- 
fold, and  most  when  he  was  himself  sor- 
rowful even  unto  death. 

I  do  not  want  here  to  disguise  his  faults : 
he  was  exacting,  suspicious,  irritable,  and 
wayward.  He  had  none  of  the  bluff  good- 
humour,  the  sturdy  dutifulness  of  the  solid 
type  of  Englishman,  who  does  fine  work 
in  the  world.  He  could  not  bear  to  be 
thwarted  or  opposed.  He  was  dogmatic,  self- 
opinionated,  and  vain ;  but  these  faults  are 
but  the  seams  and  channels  in  the  weather- 
worn crag,  which  would  otherwise  be  but 
a  meaningless  pyramid  of  stone.  We  ought 
not  to  love  the  faults  of  great  men  or  to  con- 
done them,  but  we  may  love  them  because 
of  their  faults,  and  because  of  the  gallant 
fight  they  made  with  them,  with  an  intensity 
and  a  compassion  that  we  cannot  give  to 
statuesque  and  flawless  lives.  The  whole 
thing,  in  its  enthusiasm,  its  guilelessness, 


264  Ruskin 

its  passion  for  all  that  is  pure  and  beautiful, 
is  so  infinitely  noble,  that  I  for  one  can  but 
regard  it  with  an  awe  and  a  gratitude  that 
is  half  wonder  and  half  shame — wonder  at 
a  thing  so  great,  and  shame  that  one  can 
be  so  far  away  from  what  a  man  may  be. 


5 


And  so  one  is  brought  back  to  the  fact 
that  it  was  as  a  personality  that  Ruskin  had 
his  effect  on  the  generation ;  and  that  per- 
sonality I  shall  try  to  delineate,  though  of 
all  things  in  the  world  personality  is  the 
hardest  thing  to  estimate,  for  one  simple 
reason,  that  a  character  is  not  only,  as  is 
often  supposed,  a  mixture  of  ingredients, 
like  a  salad  or  a  stew,  the  net  result  of 
which  is  grateful  and  savoury.  It  may  be 
looked  at  in  that  aspect,  and  it  is  true 
enough  that,  in  dealing  with  people  for  or- 
dinary social  purposes,  one  is  justified  in 
regarding  temperaments  in  this  light,  as 
compounded  dishes,  where  a  certain  bal- 


A  Study  in  Personality       265 

ance  and  proportion  of  qualities  makes  the 
effect  of  a  personality  pungent  or  fragrant, 
commonplace  or  repellent,  as  the  case  may 
be.  But  when  it  comes  to  the  deeper  re- 
lations of  life,  when  one  is  concerned  writh 
loving  and  admiring  people,  being  moved 
by  what  they  say  or  think,  imitating  them, 
even  worshipping  them,  there  come  in  two 
further  qualities,  which  are  not  only  a  ques- 
tion of  blend  and  proportion,  but  two  per- 
fectly distinct  things — two  qualities  which 
are  difficult  to  disentangle  and  analyse,  be- 
cause they  permeate  other  qualities,  making 
them  on  the  one  hand  attractive  and  on 
the  other  emphatic.  And  these  two  great 
qualities  are  on  the  one  hand  charm,  and 
on  the  other  moral  force.  It  is  very  hard 
to  say  what  charm  is,  and  in  what  it  con- 
sists. It  is  a  thing  which  some  people  pos- 
sess to  an  extraordinary  degree,  making  all 
that  they  do  or  say  interesting  and  beauti- 
ful, penetrating  gesture  and  movement, 
feature  and  voice,  so  that  it  all  seems  a 
revelation  of  some  secret  and  inner  beauty 


266  Ruskin 

of  soul  and  mind.  Yet  this  charm  is  in 
itself  and  by  itself  a  dangerous  thing,  for 
it  often  coexists  without  any  great  degree 
of  moral  force,  and  lives  so  much  in  its 
own  power  of  pleasing  that  it  is  often  apt 
to  lead  its  owner  to  make  any  sacrifices  if 
only  he  can  please.  And  thus  because  such 
charm  is  as  much  felt  by  the  evil  and 
sensual  as  by  the  high-minded  and  pure,  it 
sometimes  falls  a  victim  quite  early  in  life 
to  gross  and  robust  influences,  and  is  car- 
ried off  captive  over  dark  seas  of  experi- 
ence, like  some  beautiful  slave  to  serve  the 
passion  of  evil  masters. 

And  then  too  there  is  a  further  kind  of 
charm,  which  is  not  a  superficial  charm, 
but'  the  fragrance  of  a  sweet-tempered, 
simple,  and  peaceable  character,  which  wins 
regard  and  trust  because  it  is  modest  and 
trustworthy,  reasonable  and  sympathetic, 
and  does  not  easily  condemn  or  despise. 
Such  as  these  have  a  way  of  drawing  out 
and  evoking  the  best  in  others,  and  are 
loved  partly  on  that  account. 


A  Study  in  Personality       267 

Now  Kuskin  bad  both  of  these  kinds  of 
charm.  It  may  again  be  stated  that  though 
he  was  often,  in  his  public  utterances,  vehe- 
ment, bitter,  and  incisive,  these  qualities 
did  not  appear  in  his  private  intercourse 
or  in  his  talk.  He  was  in  ordinary  com- 
panionship extraordinarily  graceful  and 
winning,  courteous  and  considerate.  Not 
only  was  his  own  talk  flowing  and  suggest- 
ive, and  full  of  beauty  both  of  thought  and 
word,  but  he  had  a  power  of  comforting 
and  reassuring  the  shy  and  awkward,  of 
deftly  taking  up  and  embellishing  the  mur- 
murs of  embarrassed  people,  yet  without 
seeming  to  make  them  his  own.  And  he 
had  too  a  delightful  frankness,  which  made 
his  companions  feel  that  he  was  saying  what 
he  thought,  and  giving  his  best.  In  this 
he  was  like  Carlyle,  who  grumbled  and  ful- 
minated, Heaven  knows,  in  his  writings,  but 
whose  private  vehemences  and  violences 
were  corrected  by  a  glance  both  humorous 
and  tender,  which  took  off  the  edge  of  his 
incisiveness  and  sugared  the  bitter  cup. 


268  Ruskin 

And  Ruskin  too,  in  his  public  lectures,  had 
an  incomparable  atmosphere  of  grace  and 
pathos  about  him.  His  high,  clear,  and 
delicate  voice  rose  like  the  voice  of  the 
wind;  his  vehement  and  brilliant  gestures 
amplified  and  interpreted  his  words;  and 
his  flashing  eyes,  with  their  pale-blue  light, 
now  indignant  and  now  appealing,  inter- 
cepted and  electrified  the  glances  of  his 
hearers.  There  was  little  of  the  art  of  the 
orator  about  him — little  of  that  voluminous 
thunder  which  in  men  like  Mr.  Bright  or 
Mr.  Gladstone  dominated  an  audience  and 
kept  them  spell-bound,  waiting  on  every 
measured  word.  Compared  to  these  the 
eloquence  of  Ruskin  had  an  almost  femin- 
ine quality;  it  was  the  music  of  the  soul 
that  made  itself  heard,  whether  in  the  pas- 
sionate enthusiasm  for  some  work  of  deli- 
cate grace  or  suggestive  beauty,  or  the 
poignant  personal  distress,  the  uncomforted 
cry  for  faith  and  strength,  which  came  with 
such  an  appealing  frankness  from  his  lips. 
And  then  of  that  other  quality,  which 


A  Study  in  Personality       269 

I  have  called  moral  force,  which  is  like  the 
steam  of  the  engine  or  the  charge  of  the 
gun — that  force  of  conviction  which  drives 
a  truth  home  into  careless  or  indifferent 
minds — this  he  had  in  fullest  measure.  It 
may  be  thought  that  part  of  Ruskin's  sick 
vision  of  the  world,  the  insistence  with 
which  the  meanness,  the  stupidity,  the  in- 
difference, the  cruelty  of  humanity  beat 
upon  him,  came  from  within  rather  than 
from  without.  And  of  course  such  melan- 
choly as  his  does  reach  and  react  upon  the 
overstrung  brain.  One  in  Ruskin's  frame 
of  mind  selects,  by  an  instinctive  sadness, 
those  elements  of  experience  and  fact  which 
confirm  his  hopeless  outlook;  and  thus  his 
sadness  is  deepened  and  fed. 

But  for  all  that  he  had  the  power,  which 
I  have  spoken  of  before, — and  which  is  a 
power  confined  to  the  truest  and  noblest  of 
human  spirits, — that  power  of  concerning 
itself  not  with  its  own  comfort  and  welfare, 
but  with  the  welfare  of  the  world,  and 
grieving  intolerably  over  evils  which  seem 


270  Ruskin 

so  unnecessary,  and  which  yet  are  so  im- 
possible to  prevent  or  to  cure.  The  selfish 
man,  at  the  sight  of  suffering  and  misery, 
asks  brutally,  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?  " 
or  he  shrugs  his  shoulders  cynically  at  what 
he  does  not  approve,  or  even  takes  a  secret 
and  complacent  pleasure  in  the  thought  that 
he  enjoys  immunity  from  such  troubles,  or 
perhaps  even  congratulates  himself  on  the 
strength  and  prudence  which  have  pre- 
served him  from  such  catastrophes.  That 
is  the  attitude  of  the  Pharisee  and  the  ty- 
rant, and  it  is  by  that  temper  that  the  worst 
evils  of  the  world  are  propagated  and 
perpetuated. 

But  Ruskin,  and  such  as  Ruskin,  cast 
themselves  with  a  blind  fury  of  indignation 
and  anger  into  the  fray.  They  are  so  sensi- 
tive to  all  injustice  and  to  all  brutality, 
that  they  lose  themselves  in  scathing  words, 
and  feverish  phrases  of  horror  and  disgust 
and  despair.  And  then  when  the  schemes 
that  seem  to  such  prophets  so  simple  and 
so  desirable,  so  effective  in  helping  hu- 


A  Study  in  Personality       271 

inanity  out  of  the  mire,  all  break  down  and 
incur  ridicule  and  contempt,  what  wonder 
if  they  fall  into  wretchedness  and  frenzy 
at  the  thought  of  all  the  happiness  which 
men  throw  away  for  themselves,  and  the 
happiness  of  which  men  deprive  others 
out  of  mere  wantonness  and  carelessness? 
It  was  here,  I  think,  that  the  strength 
of  Buskin's  message  lay.  Men  who  see 
and  feel  as  he  did  are  the  hope  of  the 
human  race,  because  they  show  that  the 
moral  temperature  is  slowly  but  surely  ris- 
ing, and  that  the  generous  and  noble  im- 
pulses of  the  conscience  and  the  heart  are 
on  the  increase.  And  Ruskin  had  to  my 
mind  one  distinguishing  mark  of  the  true 
prophet — that  he  was  no  patriot.  He  was 
concerned  with  human  rather  than  with 
national  welfare.  I  am  not  decrying  the 
force  of  patriotism,  or  the  part  it  plays  in 
the  development  of  the  human  race.  But 
there  is  a  nobler  enthusiasm  even  than  the 
enthusiasm  for  race  and  nation;  because 
the  triumph  of  patriotism  must  necessarily 


272  Ruskin 

carry  with  it  the  quenching  of  the  aspira- 
tion of  other  nations,  their  defeat  and 
their  discomfiture.  It  is  only  tyranny  on  a 
larger  scale.  Ruskin  no  doubt  miscalcu- 
lated and  misunderstood  the  nature  of  his 
countrymen,  the  insularity  and  the  isola- 
tion which  mark  their  conquering  path. 
But  no  one  who  cares  for  the  larger  hopes 
of  humanity  can  hope  or  dream  that  the 
end  is  to  be  limited  by  national  greatness. 
That  is  not  a  popular  vision  in  England, 
unless  it  is  accompanied  by  a  proviso  that 
the  seat  of  the  federated  government  of 
the  world  shall  be  in  London,  and  that 
English  shall  be  the  language  of  the  hu- 
man race.  But  Ruskin  judged  other  na- 
tions not  according  to  their  resemblance  to 
our  own  race,  but  by  their  virtue  and 
nobility.  And  it  must  be  kept  in  mind  that 
he  was,  like  all  the  greatest  figures  of  our 
late  nineteenth  century — Tennyson,  Brown- 
ing, Carlyle — a  moralist  before  anything 
else.  England,  said  a  great  French  critic, 
is  pre-eminent  for  the  seriousness  with 


A  Study  in  Personality       273 

which  she  has  treated  moral  ideas  in  art; 
and  there  is  no  disguising  the  fact  that 
morality  and  not  art  is  our  main  concern. 
Part  of  Ruskin's  influence  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  based  art  on  morality;  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that  if  he  had  preached 
art  as  vehemently  for  its  own  sake,  he 
would  have  found  but  few  listeners  and 
fewer  disciples. 

It  is  then  as  a  personality  and  as  a  moral- 
ist that  we  have  to  regard  him;  as  a  man 
of  clear  vision,  relentless  idealism,  and 
kindling  speech;  who  above  all  manifested 
the  splendid  instinctive  abnegation  of  pri- 
vate happiness,  not  calculating  loss  and 
gain  in  a  spirit  of  barter,  but  finding  con- 
tentment impossible,  while  others  were  ill- 
content;  that  spirit  which  is  expressed  by 
a  parable  in  the  beautiful  words  of  the 
Song  of  Songs :  "  They  made  me  the  keeper 
of  the  vineyards;  but  mine  own  vineyard 
have  I  not  kept." 

And  now  I  will  say  one  last  thing  to 

which  all  that  I  have  said  has  been  lead- 
is 


274  Ruskin 

ing — a  thing  borne  to  me  upon  the  winds 
and  waves  of  life,  by  grievous  experience, 
and,  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say,  by  sad  self- 
questioning.  And  this  thing  is  confirmed, 
in  its  height  and  depth,  by  the  wonderful 
life  that  we  have  been  considering.  No 
saint  or  philosopher  has  ever  done  more 
than  guess,  in  fear  and  perplexity  often, 
and  rarely  in  confidence  or  certainty,  at 
the  meaning  of  our  life,  our  pilgrimage. 
So  much  of  life,  in  spite  of  its  glimpses  of 
joy  and  light,  seems  so  aimless,  so  per- 
plexed, so  unaccountable,  with  its  mys- 
terious satisfactions,  its  disproportionate 
sorrows.  But  the  best  and  noblest  of  men 
have  seemed  to  see  in  it  a  chance,  if  we 
are  frank  and  candid  in  facing  experience, 
and  if  we  are  not  dismayed  by  its  shadows 
or  misled  by  its  sunshine,  a  chance  of  hav- 
ing something  done  for  our  spirits  which 
can  be  done  in  no  other  way.  A  good  many 
people  start  with  a  high-hearted  belief  in 
life  and  its  possibilities;  and  then  like  the 
grain  sown  by  the  Heavenly  Sower,  many 


A  Study  in  Personality       275 

lives  are  withered  by  sensuality,  or  choked 
by  prosperity,  or  eaten  up  by  evil  influences, 
or  drenched  by  dulness;  but  whatever  hap- 
pens we  are  not  meant  to  find  life  easy  and 
delightful;  it  is  a  discipline,  when  all  is 
said  and  done.  But  there  is  something 
deeper  than  that.  "  Depend  upon  it,"  said 
old  Carlyle,  "  the  brave  man  has  somehow 
or  other  to  give  his  life  away."  We  are 
called  upon  to  make  an  unconditional  sur- 
render. Unconditional,  I  say,  because  it 
cannot  be  on  our  own  terms.  We  cannot 
reserve  what  we  like,  or  choose  what  we 
prefer.  It  is  a  surrender  to  a  great  and 
awful  Will,  of  whose  workings  we  know 
little,  but  which  means  to  triumph,  what- 
ever we  may  do  to  hinder  or  delay  its  pur- 
pose. We  must  work  indeed  by  the  best 
light  that  we  have.  We  must  do  the  next 
thing,  and  the  kind  thing,  and  the  coura- 
geous thing,  as  it  falls  to  us  to  do.  But 
sooner  or  later  we  must  yield  our  wills 
up,  and  not  simply  out  of  tame  and  fear- 
ful submission,  but  because  we  at  last  see 


276  Ruskin 

that  the  Will  behind  all  things  is  greater, 
purer,  more  beautiful,  more  holy  than  any- 
thing we  can  imagine  or  express.  Some 
find  this  easier  than  others — and  some  never 
seem  to  achieve  it — which  is  the  hardest 
problem  of  all.  But  there  is  no  peace  with- 
out that  surrender,  though  it  cannot  be 
made  at  once;  there  is  in  most  of  us  a 
fibre  of  self-will,  of  hardness,  of  stubborn- 
ness which  we  cannot  break,  but  wrhich  God 
may  be  trusted  to  break  for  us,  if  we  desire 
it  to  be  broken.  And  the  reason  why  the 
life  of  Kuskin  is  so  marvellous  a  record, 
is  that  we  here  see  the  unconditional  sur- 
render, of  which  I  speak,  made  on  the  most 
august  scale  by  a  man  dear  to  God,  start- 
ing in  life  with  high  gifts  and  noble 
advantages. 

Will  you  bear  with  me  if  I  entreat  you 
to  discern  this  truth  not  in  the  life  of  Rus- 
kin but  in  your  own  lives  as  well?  Do  not 
think  for  a  moment  that  I  mean  that  life 
ought  to  be  a  mournful  metaphysic,  with- 
out light  and  energy  and  joy.  The  more  of 


A  Study  in  Personality       277 

these  that  we  have  in  our  lives  the  better 
for  each  and  all.  But  if  the  light  is 
clouded,  and  the  joy  is  blotted  out,  and 
the  energy  burns  low,  it  is  a  sign  not  that 
we  have  failed,  but  that  the  mind  of  God 
is  bent  still  more  urgently  upon  us.  What 
we  may  pray  for  and  desire  is  courage,  to 
live  eagerly  in  joy  and  not  less  eagerly  in 
sorrow;  to  be  temperate  in  happiness,  and 
courageous  in  trouble;  that  we  may  say  in 
the  words  of  Ruskin's  great  poet-friend, 
whose  splendid  optimism  still  made  the 
great  surrender — 

"What's  Life  to  me? 
Where'er  I  look  is  fire;  where'er  I  listen, 
Music ;  and  where  I  tend,  bliss  evermore." 


vn 


THERE  is  a  great  deal  scattered  about 
through  Ruskin's  various  books  of  the  de- 
velopment of  his  literary  style,  and  of  the 
various  influences  which  helped  to  mould  it. 
His  own  account  of  the  matter  is  very  inter- 
esting, not  because  it  offers  a  key  to  the  mys- 
tery, but  because  it  wholly  fails  to  explain 
anything  or  to  account  for  anything.  It  is 
rather  as  though  a  painter  were  to  say  what 
kinds  of  brushes  he  used,  and  where  he  got 
his  colours;  but  the  instinct  by  which  the 
artist  knows  that  a  blot  of  paint  of  a  cer- 
tain shape  and  in  a  certain  juxtaposition 
will  produce  the  effect  upon  the  eye  of  a 
moss-grown  stone,  or  of  a  tuft  of  meadow- 
grass,  this  is  the  incommunicable  and  the 
278 


A  Study  in  Personality       279 

inexplicable  thing.  It  is  the  same  \vith  lan- 
guage. We  have  all  of  us  all  the  material 
to  work  with  which  Ruskin  had.  The 
thoughts  are  not  wholly  original  or  un- 
familiar. We  can  most  of  us  construct  a 
grammatical  sentence,  and  it  is  in  our 
power  if  we  choose  to  make  lists  of  strik- 
ing words.  But  what  we  cannot  command 
is  the  delicate  ripple  of  mood,  the  ironical 
emphasis,  the  contrast  of  humour  and 
pathos,  the  subtle  insistence  on  the  central 
thought,  the  logical  staircase  that  leads  to 
the  peremptory  climax.  Then  too  comes  in 
the  art  of  the  coherent  paragraph,  the 
parenthesis  that  refreshes  and  sustains  the 
thought,  the  melodious  cadence  of  words, 
the  subtle  alliteration.  Kuskin  had,  first 
of  all,  intensity  of  feeling,  then  great  lucid- 
ity of  expression — I  do  not  feel  that  his 
intellectual  grasp  is  very  great.  He  can, 
or  he  could  in  earlier  days,  follow  a  definite 
path,  and  pick  his  way  very  directly,  to 
the  goal,  avoiding  the  thoughts  which  are 
not  the  exact  ones  that  he  needs,  and  wrhich 


280  Ruskin 

tend  by  their  similarity  to  the  central 
thought  to  confuse  the  less  precise  thinker; 
but  he  had  not  the  gift  of  a  wide  survey, 
the  power  which  very  impressive  writers 
have  of  letting  the  whole  body  of  thought 
just  influence  and  contribute  to,  without 
distracting  or  blurring,  the  central  point. 
He  had  a  splendid  gift  of  picturesque  illus- 
tration, and  in  the  earlier  days  a  wonderful 
power  of  metaphor — of  expressing  one 
thought  in  the  terms  of  another,  which  is 
the  essence  of  the  poetical  gift.  And  then, 
though  he  never  mastered  the  limitations 
of  poetry — he  was  indeed  mastered  by  them 
— his  poetical  work  gave  him  a  great  range 
of  vocabulary,  and  a  matchless  power  of 
amassing  together  words  beautiful  in  them- 
selves, and  infinitely  enhanced  by  their 
contact  with  other  words. 

Pope  was  one  of  his  masters,  he  says,  for 
absolute  lucidity  of  expression,  perfect  bal- 
ance and  conciseness,  and  complete  freedom 
from  anything  otiose  or  disproportioned. 
One  knows  too  that  he  fell  at  one  time 


A  Study  in  Personality       281 

under  the  influence  of  Hooker,  and  that 
part  of  Modern  Painters  was  written  under 
the  sway  of  Hooker's  stately  deliberation 
and  his  incomparable  cogency  of  thought. 
And  further,  he  states  that  he  owed  much 
to  Dr.  Johnson,  in  respect  of  clear  and 
just  statement,  orderly  sequence,  and  har- 
monious evolutions. 

But  he  insists  that  he  owed  his  vocabu- 
lary, his  sense  of  rhythm  and  cadence,  the 
solemnity  and  dignity  of  his  vocabulary, 
entirely  to  his  study  of  the  Bible. 

Here  is  the  passage  in  which  he  makes 
the  above  statement: 

I  have  above  said  that  had  it  not  been  for 
constant  reading  of  the  Bible,  I  might  pro- 
bably have  taken  Johnson  for  my  model  of 
English.  To  a  useful  extent  I  have  always 
done  so;  in  these  first  essays,  partly  because 
I  could  not  help  it,  partly  of  set,  and  well 
set,  purpose. 

On  our  foreign  journeys,  it  being  of  course 
desirable  to  keep  the  luggage  as  light  as  pos- 
sible, my  father  had  judged  that  four  little 
volumes  of  Johnson — the  Idler  and  the  Ram- 


282  Ruskin 

blcr — did,  under  names  wholly  appropriate  to 
the  circumstances;  contain  more  substantial 
literary  nourishment  than  could  be,  from  any 
other  author,  packed  into  so  portable  com- 
pass. And  accordingly,  in  spare  hours,  and  on 
wet  days,  the  turns  and  returns  of  reiterated 
Rambler  and  iterated  Idler  fastened  themselves 
in  my  ears  and  mind ;  nor  was  it  possible  for 
me,  till  long  afterwards,  to  quit  myself  of 
Johnsonian  symmetry  and  balance  in  sen- 
tences intended,  either  with  swordsman's  or 
pavior's  blow,  to  cleave  an  enemy's  crest,  or 
drive  down  the  oaken  pile  of  a  principle.  I 
never  for  an  instant  compared  Johnson  to 
Scott,  Pope,  Byron,  or  any  of  the  really  great 
writers  whom  I  loved.  But  I  at  once  and  for 
ever  recognised  in  him  a  man  entirely  sincere, 
and  infallibly  wise  in  the  view  and  estimate 
he  gave  of  the  common  questions,  business,  and 
ways  of  the  world.  I  valued  his  sentences  not 
primarily  because  they  were  symmetrical,  but 
because  they  were  just  and  clear;  it  is  a 
method  of  judgment  rarely  used  by  the  aver- 
age public,  who  ask  from  an  author  always, 
in  the  first  place,  arguments  in  favour  of  their 
own  opinions,  in  elegant  terms;  and  are  just 
as  ready  with  their  applause  for  a  sentence 
of  Macaulay's,  which  may  have  no  more  sense 
in  it  than  a  blot  pinched  between  doubled 
paper,  as  to  reject  one  of  Johnson's,  telling 


A  Study  in  Personality       283 

against  their  own  prejudice, — though  its  sym- 
metry be  as  of  thunder  answering  from  two 
horizons. 

This  is  to  a  certain  extent  true;  but  the 
truth  lies  deeper  still;  Ruskin  did  not 
really  find  his  style  until  he  had  finally  and 
effectually  freed  himself  from  all  such  in- 
fluences. He  began  by  having  a  rich  and 
sonorous  vocabulary,  a  strong  sense  of  bal- 
ance and  antithesis,  preference  for  rolling 
rhetoric  and  answering  clauses.  The  ef- 
fects are  patent  and  indisputable;  but  it  is 
rhetoric,  and  sometimes  almost  bombast. 
It  is  like  a  child  playing  with  thunderbolts, 
and  finding  it  excellent  fun.  The  sentences 
smell  of  the  platform  and  of  the  pulpit; 
they  are  youthfully  resplendent,  and  dog- 
matic with  the  infallibility  of  inexperience. 
One  feels  the  writer  is  saying,  "  Here  we 
go,"  and  half  the  joy  of  it  lies,  not  in  hav- 
ing something  to  say,  but  in  saying  it  so 
loud  and  clear.  Of  course  when  all  is  said, 
it  is  the  work  of  a  man  of  genius,  but  it 
is  hard,  metallic,  made-up  writing.  There 


284  Ruskin 

are  plenty  of  fine  things  said  and  trumpeted 
out;  but  it  is  in  no  sense  great  work,  ex- 
cept in  its  fine  vigour  and  peremptoriness, 
and  in  the  promise  of  mastery  given  by  the 
fervent  analysis  and  boisterous  energy. 

Here  is  an  instance  of  the  measured 
Johnsonian  manner: 

He  who  has  built  himself  a  hut  on  a  desert 
heath,  and  carved  his  bed,  and  table,  and  chair 
out  of  the  nearest  forest,  may  have  some  right 
to  take  pride  in  the  appliances  of  his  narrow 
chamber,  as  assuredly  he  will  have  joy  in  them. 
But  the  man  who  has  had  a  palace  built,  and 
adorned,  and  furnished  for  him,  may  indeed 
have  many  advantages  above  the  other,  but  he 
has  no'  reason  to  be  proud  of  his  upholsterer's 
skill;  and  it  is  ten  to  one  if  he  has  half  the 
joy  in  his  couch  of  ivory  that  the  other  will 
have  in  his  pallet  of  pine. 

In  the  following  passage,  which  stood  in 
the  first  and  second  editions  of  Modern 
Painters,  but  was  cancelled  in  the  third, 
he  describes  the  treatment  of  Venice  by 
certain  great  artists.  He  concludes: 

But  let  us  take,  with  Turner,  the  last  and 


A  Study  in  Personality       285 

greatest  step  of  all.  Thank  heaven,  we  are  in 
sunshine  again, — and  what  sunshine !  Not  the 
lurid,  gloomy,  plague-like  oppression  of  Cana- 
letti,  but  white,  flashing  fulness  of  dazzling 
light,  which  the  waves  drink  and  the  clouds 
breathe,  bounding  and  burning  in  intensity  of 
joy.  That  sky, — it  is  a  very  visible  infinity, 
— liquid,  measureless,  unfathomable,  panting, 
and  melting  through  the  chasms  in  the  long 
fields  of  snow-white,  flaked,  slow-moving  va- 
pour, that  guide  the  eye  along  their  multitudi- 
nous waves  down  to  the  islanded  rest  of  the 
Euganean  hills.  Do  we  dream,  or  does  the 
white  forked  sail  drift  nearer,  and  nearer  yet, 
diminishing  the  blue  sea  between  us  with  the 
fulness  of  its  wings?  It  pauses  now;  but 
the  quivering  of  its  bright  reflection  troubles 
the  shadows  of  the  sea,  those  azure,  fathomless 
depths  of  crystal  mystery  on  which  the  swift- 
ness of  the  poised  gondola  floats  double,  its 
black  beak  lifted  like  the  crest  of  a  dark  ocean 
bird,  its  scarlet  draperies  flashed  back  from 
the  kindling  surface,  and  its  bent  oar  break- 
ing the  radiant  water  into  a  dust  of  gold. 
Dreamlike  and  dim,  but  glorious,  the  unnum- 
bered palaces  lift  their  shafts  out  of  the  hollow 
sea, — pale  ranks  of  motionless  flame, — their 
mighty  towers  sent  up  to  heaven  like  tongues 
of  more  eager  fire, — their  grey  domes  looming 
vast  and  dark,  like  eclipsed  worlds, — their 


286  Ruskin 

sculptured  arabesques  and  purple  marble  fad- 
ing farther  and  fainter,  league  beyond  league, 
lost  in  the  light  of  distance.  Detail  after  de- 
tail, thought  beyond  thought,  you  find  and 
feel  them  through  the  radiant  mystery,  inex- 
haustible as  indistinct,  beautiful,  but  never  all 
revealed;  secret  in  fulness,  confused  in  sym- 
metry, as  nature  herself  is  to  the  bewildered 
and  foiled  glance,  giving  out  of  that  indis- 
tinctness, and  through  that  confusion,  the 
perpetual  newness  of  the  infinite  and  the 
beautiful. 
Yes,  Mr.  Turner,  we  are  in  Venice  now. 

Let  me  here  frankly  confess  that  to  my- 
self the  style  of  the  Modern  Painters  is 
not  wholly  attractive.  It  is  too  argumenta- 
tive and  rhetorical,  didactic  rather  than 
persuasive,  and  the  device  grows  mono- 
tonous by  which  the  thought  gets  gradually 
infused  by  emotion,  until  it  culminates  in 
one  of  those  rich  rolling  sentences,  which 
break  like  a  huge  sea-billow,  full  of  sound 
and  colour  and  motion.  But  the  beauty  of 
the  great  sentences  themselves  is  indis- 
putable, the  perfect  certainty  of  touch,  the 
feeling  that  he  is  never  mastered  by  his 


A  Study  in  Personality       287 

material,  but  has  all  the  substance  of  lan- 
guage at  his  command — these  qualities  are 
patent  and.  undeniable.  But  one  feels 
rather  as  Queen  Victoria  is  recorded  to 
have  said  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  that  she  dis- 
liked her  interviews  with  him  because  he 
talked  to  her  as  if  she  were  a  public  meet- 
ing. There  is  a  sense  of  being  clamoured 
at  and  overwhelmed,  rather  than  of  being 
led  and  persuaded.  And  there  is  something 
more  than  bitterness  in  Whistler's  famous 
criticism  when  he  said  that  Ruskin  was 
possessed  of  "a  flow  of  language  that  would, 
could  he  hear  it,  give  Titian  the  same  shock 
of  surprise  that  was  Balaam's,  when  the 
first  great  critic  proffered  his  opinions." 

Ruskin  wrote,  as  we  know,  with  singular 
ease,  but  at  the  same  time  he  took  immense 
pains.  He  rose  very  early,  and  did  his  writ- 
ing in  the  freshness  of  the  day,  and  it  was 
his  habit  to  read  aloud  at  breakfast,  to  his 
family  or  his  fellow-travellers,  what  he  had 
written,  for  their  approval  rather  than  for 
their  criticism. 


288  Ruskin 

The  characteristics  which  I  have  men- 
tioned mark  all  his  earlier  work.  You.  will 
find  them  in  his  earliest  papers,  those  ela- 
borate studies  of  cottage  architecture  in 
various  countries,  which  he  contributed 
when  hardly  more  than  a  boy  to  a  maga- 
zine: and  this  manner  culminates  in  the 
Stones  of  Venice,  in  which  he  showed  the 
ultimate  development  of  this  didactic  and 
rhetorical  art. 

Then  we  come  to  the  middle  manner — 
the  later  volumes  of  the  Modern  Painters 
and  the  books  like  Sesame  and  Lilies.  Here 
the  vehemence  is  a  good  deal  abated;  there 
is  a  substitution,  so  to  speak,  of  wood  for 
wind;  the  blare  of  the  cornet  is  exchanged 
for  the  softer  melody  of  what  the  Greeks 
called  "  the  spittle-wasting  flute."  The 
style  has  lost  in  hardness  and  gained  im- 
mensely in  beauty.  There  is  still  a  love  of 
balance  and  antithesis;  but  it  is  now  more 
a  question  of  orderly  sequence  and  struc- 
ture— the  counterpoint  is  less  visible.  And 
here  I  may  say  is  the  point  at  which  the 


A  Study  in  Personality       289 

ordinary  reader  stops.  The  man  of  taste 
and  intelligence  can  perceive  as  a  rule 
the  faults  of  the  earlier  manner,  its  gusty 
eloquence,  its  sharp-cut  melody.  He  can 
detect  the  mellifluous  beauty  of  the  new 
cadences,  the  more  equable  texture;  if  he 
sees  the  art  of  it  less,  he  is  aware  still 
more  subtly  that  it  is  there.  And  I  would 
not  say  a  word  to  shake  any  one's  faith  in 
the  perfection  of  the  art,  or  his  admiration 
of  the  more  chastened  mood.  Irony,  tender 
and  delicate  enough,  has  taken  the  place 
of  trenchant  censure  or  sharp  sarcasm. 
Kuskin  allows  himself  to  feel  more  in  pub- 
lic, to  employ  more  intimate  emotions,  more 
delicate  mysteries  of  thought.  A  touch  of 
failure  and  suffering  has  laid  its  chasten- 
ing hand  upon  the  page;  he  is  not  less  sure, 
but  he  is  less  dogmatic;  and  he  has  learnt 
that  men  must  be  persuaded  rather  than 
commanded  to  believe. 

Here  are  one  or  two  instances  of  this  fine 
manner.     The  first  is  a  very  famous  pas- 
sage on  Calais  Church,  of  which  he  himself 
19 


290  Ruskin 

did  not  wholly  approve,  because  he  thought 
that  the  word-painting  of  it  distracted  the 
minds  of  his  readers  from  more  valuable 
considerations. 

I  cannot  find  words  to  express  the  intense 
pleasure  I  have  always  in  first  finding  myself, 
after  some  prolonged  stay  in  England,  at  the 
foot  of  the  old  tower  of  Calais  church.  The 
large  neglect,  the  noble  unsightliness  of  it; 
the  record  of  its  years  written  so  visibly,  yet 
without  sign  of  weakness  or  decay;  its  stern 
wasteness  and  gloom,  eaten  away  by  the  Chan- 
nel winds,  and  overgrown  with  the  bitter  sea 
grasses ;  its  slates  and  tiles  all  shaken  and  rent, 
and  yet  not  falling;  its  desert  of  brickwork 
full  of  bolts,  and  holes,  and  ugly  fissures,  and 
yet  strong,  like  a  bare  brown  rock;  its  care- 
lessness of  what  any  one  thinks  or  feels  about 
it,  putting  forth  no  claim,  having  no  beauty 
nor  desirableness,  pride,  nor  grace ;  yet  neither 
asking  for  pity;  not,  as  ruins  are,  useless  and 
piteous,  feebly  or  fondly  garrulous  of  better 
days;  but  useful  still,  going  through  its  own 
daily  work, — as  some  old  fisherman  beaten 
grey  by  storm,  yet  drawing  his  daily  nets:  so 
it  stands,  with  no  complaint  about  its  past 
youth,  in  blanched  and  meagre  massiveness 
and  serviceableness,  gathering  human  souls  to- 


A  Study  in  Personality       291 

gether  underneath  it;  the  sound  of  its  bells  for 
prayer  still  rolling  through  its  rents:  and  the 
grey  peak  of  it  seen  far  across  the  sea,  prin- 
cipal of  the  three  that  rise  above  the  waste 
of  surfy  sand  and  hillocked  shore, — the  light- 
house for  life,  and  the  belfry  for  labour,  and 
this  for  patience  and  praise. 

And  the  following  is  a  piece  which  illus- 
trates his  ironical  manner,  a  description 
from  the  fourth  volume  of  Modern  Painters 
of  Claude's  picture  of  the  Mill: 

The  foreground  is  a  piece  of  very  lovely  and 
perfect  forest  scenery,  with  a  dance  of  peasants 
by  a  brook  side ;  quite  enough  subject  to  form, 
in  the  hands  of  a  master,  an  impressive  and 
complete  picture.  On  the  other  side  of  the 
brook,  however,  we  have  a  piece  of  pastoral 
life;  a  man  with  some  bulls  and  goats  tum- 
bling headforemost  into  the  water,  owing  to 
some  sudden  paralytic  affection  of  all  their 
legs.  Even  this  group  is  one  too  many;  the 
shepherd  had  no  business  to  drive  his  flock  so 
near  the  dancers,  and  the  dancers  will  cer- 
tainly frighten  the  cattle.  But  when  we  look 
farther  into  the  picture,  our  feelings  receive 
a  sudden  and  violent  shock,  by  the  unex- 
pected appearance,  amidst  things  pastoral  and 


292  Ruskin 

musical,  of  the  military;  a  number  of  Roman 
soldiers  riding  in  on  hobby-horses,  with  a 
leader  on  foot,  apparently  encouraging  them 
to  make  an  immediate  and  decisive  charge  on 
the  musicians.  Beyond  the  soldiers  is  a  cir- 
cular temple,  in  exceedingly  bad  repair;  and 
close  beside  it,  built  against  its  very  walls,  a 
neat  watermill  in  full  work.  By  the  mill  flows 
a  large  river  with  a  weir  all  across  it.  The 
weir  has  not  been  made  for  the  mill  (for  that 
receives  its  water  from  the  hills  by  a  trough 
carried  over  the  temple),  but  it  is  particularly 
ugly  and  monotonous  in  its  line  of  fall,  and 
the  water  below  forms  a  dead-looking  pond, 
on  which  some  people  are  fishing  in  punts. 
The  banks  of  this  river  resemble  in  contour 
the  later  geological  formations  around  London, 
constituted  chiefly  of  broken  pots  and  oyster- 
shells.  At  an  inconvenient  distance  from  the 
water-side  stands  a  city,  composed  of  twenty- 
five  round  towers  and  a  pyramid.  Beyond  the 
city  is  a  handsome  bridge;  beyond  the  bridge, 
part  of  the  Campagna,  with  fragments  of 
aqueducts ;  beyond  the  Campagna,  the  chain  of 
the  Alps;  on  the  left,  the  cascades  of  Tivoli. 

The  following  passage  is  from  The  Seven 
Lamps  of  Architecture: 

An  architect  should  live  as  little  in  cities  as 


A  Study  in  Personality       293 

a  painter.  Send  him  to  our  hills  and  let  him 
study  there  what  nature  understands  by  a 
buttress,  and  what  by  a  dome. 

There  was  something  in  the  old  power  of 
architecture,  which  it  had  from  the  recluse 
more  than  from  the  citizen.  The  buildings  of 
which  I  have  spoken  with  chief  praise,  rose, 
indeed,  out  of  the  war  of  the  piazza,  and  above 
the  fury  of  the  populace:  and  Heaven  forbid 
that  for  such  cause  we  should  ever  have  to 
lay  a  larger  stone,  or  rivet  a  firmer  bar  in  our 
England !  But  we  have  other  sources  of  power, 
in  the  imagery  of  our  iron  coasts  and  azure 
hills;  of  power  more  pure,  nor  less  serene,  than 
that  of  the  hermit  spirit  which  once  lighted 
with  white  lines  of  cloisters  the  glades  of  the 
Alpine  pine,  and  raised  into  ordered  spires  the 
wild  rocks  of  the  Norman  sea;  which  gave  to 
the  temple  gate  the  depth  and  darkness  of 
Elijah's  Horeb  cave;  and  lifted,  out  of  the 
populous  city,  grey  cliffs  of  lonely  stone,  into 
the  midst  of  sailing  birds  and  silent  air. 

And  here  is  a  wonderful  word-cadence 
from  one  of  his  later  lectures  at  Oxford, 
where  he  is  speaking  of  the  dove: 

And  of  these  wings  and  this  mind  of  hers, 
this  is  what  reverent  science  should  teach  you : 
first  with  what  parting  of  plume  and  what 


294  Ruskin 

soft  pressure  and  rhythmic  beating  of  divided* 
air  she  reaches  that  miraculous  swiftness  of 
undubious  motion  compared  with  which  the 
tempest  is  slow  and  the  arrow  uncertain;  and 
secondly  what  clue  there  is,  visible,  or  con- 
ceivable to  thought  of  man,  by  which,  to  her 
living  conscience  and  errorless  pointing  of  mag- 
netic soul,  her  distant  home  is  felt  afar  be- 
yond the  horizon,  and  the  straight  path, 
through  concealing  clouds,  and  over  trackless 
lands,  made  plain  to  her  desire,  and  her  duty, 
by  the  finger  of  God. 


And  here,  as  I  have  said,  many  firm  be- 
lievers part  company  with  Buskin,  as  dis- 
ciples have  before  now  forsaken  their 
master.  In  Fors  Clavigera,  a  reader,  how- 
ever faithful,  is  apt  to  be  disconcerted  by 
the  tense  passion  of  emotion,  the  fantastic 
changes  and  counterchanges,  the  inconse- 
quent sequence  of  statements,  the  fiery 
restlessness,  the  wild  discursiveness,  the  dim 
presence  of  something  diseased  and  terrify- 
ing in  the  background,  that  seems  to  cry 
and  weep.  But  I  have  no  sort  of  doubt 


A  Study  in  Personality       295 

that  in  Fors  Clavigera  Ruskin  reached  a  far 
higher  level  of  art  than  he  had  ever  reached 
before,  because  he  was  doing  a  thing  which 
is  not,  I  believe,  attempted  elsewhere  in 
literature.  He  was  thinking  aloud.  If  any 
of  you  will  try  an  experiment  in  this  pro- 
cess you  will  find  the  incredible  difficulty 
of  the  task.  You  know  how  most  of  us  in 
idle  moments,  or  perhaps  even  more  in  mo- 
ments when  we  are  officially  supposed  to  be 
occupied,  lapse  into  a  reverie,  in  which  a 
stream  of  thought — it  may  be  placid,  it  may 
be  vehement — sweeps  through  the  brain 
from  the  flushed  reservoir  of  the  mind. 
Suppose  you  check  yourself  suddenly  in 
one  of  these  reveries.  Try  to  put  down  in 
words  what  you  have  been  thinking  of,  and 
as  you  thought  it.  You  will  find  it  to  be 
ludicrously  impossible.  Half  the  thoughts 
have  passed  without  clothing  themselves  in 
any  vesture  of  word,  one  thing  has  sug- 
gested another,  often  enough  by  some  trivial 
similarity  of  superficial  form.  The  whole 
thing  is  evasive,  elusive,  irrecoverable.  Yet 


296  Ruskin 

it  was  exactly  this  which  Ruskin  did.  He 
had  attained  by  native  instinct  and  by  enor- 
mous industry  a  power  of  words  to  which 
I  hardly  know  any  equal.  Perhaps  Brown- 
ing might  have  attained  it,  if  he  had  worked 
in  prose.  But  what  is  more  wonderful  still 
is  the  kaleidoscopic  variety  of  emotion- 
serious,  profound,  indignant,  tender,  hu- 
morous, menacing,  severe,  playful,  ironical 
moods — which  flash  and  twinkle  like  a  rip- 
pling sea.  It  is  not  merely  the  representa- 
tion of  a  sustained  mood,  to  which  many 
great  writers  have  attained ;  it  is  the  repre- 
sentation of  moods  as  various,  and  trans- 
itions as  swift,  as  ever  passed  through  a 
human  mind.  The  process  by  which  the 
very  stuff  of  the  soul  here  takes  shape  is, 
I  own,  utterly  incomprehensible  to  me,  be- 
cause it  seems  not  so  much  different  in 
scope,  as  different  in  kind  from  anything 
which  any  other  writer  has  ever  dreamed 
of  attempting. 

And  now,  out  of  the  deep  upheaval  of 
thought,  the  wreck  of  all  his  old  security 


A  Study  in  Personality       297 

and  self-confidence,  the  devastating  sadness 
which  laid  its  hand  upon  him,  he  devel- 
oped a  perfectly  new  manner  of  writing, 
which  seems  to  me  to  belong  to  a  wholly 
different  and  infinitely  higher  range  of  art. 
He  threw  aside  all  that  was  frigid  and 
academical  and  formal;  he  retained  the 
lucid  emphasis  and  the  rich  texture  of  lan- 
guage. But  instead  of  composing  a  stately 
and  impressive  argument,  he  gained  a  new 
art,  that  of  thinking  his  thought  into  words. 
Perhaps  this  testified  to  a  certain  lack  of 
mental  concentration ;  but  the  result  is  that 
instead  of  seeing  the  mind  in  posture  and 
performance,  you  can  look  into  it  like  a 
clear  stream,  and  wratch  every  break  and 
ripple  of  the  crystal  tide.  The  result  is 
a  kind  of  ease,  which  seems  the  most  abso- 
lutely effortless  and  spontaneous  thing,  and 
yet  it  is  a  thing  which  none  but  the  very 
highest  masters  of  style  and  expression  have 
achieved.  Indeed  I  will  say  frankly  that 
I  know  of  no  writer  in  the  world  except 
Plato  who  has  achieved  this.  There  are 


298  Ruskin 

writers,  like  Scott  and  Thackeray,  who  got 
the  same  command  over  their  medium;  but 
theirs  is  a  simpler  task,  because  they  deal 
only  with  narrative  and  the  play  of  definite 
emotions.  But  Kuskin  was  moving  in  a 
loftier  and  more  complex  intellectual  re- 
gion, that  of  reflective  emotion,  where  the 
very  ideas  are  vague  and  mist-like,  and  the 
task  is  rather  to  give  a  sense  of  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  mind  rather  than  its  definite 
judgments  and  conclusions. 

He  reached  then  the  height  of  his  power 
in  Fors  Clavigera,  which  achieves  that 
triumph  of  literary  genius,  the  sense  that 
the  reader  is  within  the  very  four  walls 
of  the  writer's  mind.  Of  course  writing 
may  be  used  for  many  purposes,  and  among 
these  purposes  are  some  that  are  achieved 
best  when  all  sense  of  personality  is  with- 
drawn. But  the  real  goal  which  lies  be- 
hind such  art  is  that  of  self-revelation.  It 
is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  this 
means  that  a  writer  should  do  nothing  but 
talk  about  himself.  That  is  not  the  point 


A  Study  in  Personality       299 

at  all — indeed  it  is  one  of  the  surest  ways 
of  avoiding  the  sense  of  personality.  A 
man  may  entertain  you,  point  out  his  pos- 
sessions, talk  continuously  and  persistently 
about  his  tastes  and  preferences,  and  yet 
leave  you  knowing  nothing  of  the  spirit 
within.  But  Kuskin  admits  you  to  the 
inmost  shrine  of  his  spirit,  where  the  soul 
is  naked  and  unashamed.  You  see  the 
pulsing  blood  and  the  palpitating  heart. 
Nothing  is  hidden  from  you,  nothing  forced 
upon  the  view.  And  it  all  culminated  in 
the  exquisite  Prwterita,  which  for  utter 
frankness  and  directness  has  no  equal.  It 
is  not  as  though  he  were  bidding  you  count 
his  wounds,  share  his  vanished  joys,  com- 
passionate his  sorrows.  He  is  far  past  all 
that.  His  own  heart  has  given  him  all  the 
comfort  of  which  it  is  capable,  and  far 
more  pain  than  any  faith  or  philosophy 
can  staunch  or  heal.  Like  the  Ancient 
Mariner  or  the  Last  Minstrel,  he  tells  his 
tale,  in  obedience  to  the  primal  law  of 
utterance.  He  looks  for  no  reward  or 


300  Ruskin 

applause;  he  merely  unburdens  himself  of 
the  awful,  the  mysterious  secret  of  life. 

Here  is  as  much  as  I  dare  quote  of  a 
letter  in  Fors  Clavigera,  entitled  "  The 
Elysian  Fields  " : 

1.  My  FRIENDS, — The  main  purpose  of  these 
letters  having  been  stated  in  the  last  of  them, 
it   is  needful   that  I   should  tell   you  why   I 
approach  the  discussion  of  it  in  this  so  desul- 
tory way,  writing    (as  it  is  too  true  that  I 
must  continue  to  write)   "  of  things  that  you 
little  care  for,  in  words  that  you  cannot  easily 
understand." 

I  write  of  things  you  care  little  for,  know- 
ing that  what  you  least  care  for  is,  at  this 
juncture,  of  the  greatest  moment  to  you. 

And  I  write  in  words  you  are  little  likely 
to  understand,  because  I  have  no  wish  (rather 
the  contrary)  to  tell  you  anything  that  you 
can  understand  without  taking  trouble.  You 
usually  read  so  fast  that  you  can  catch  nothing 
but  the  echo  of  your  opinions,  which,  of  course, 
you  are  pleased  to  see  in  print.  I  neither  wish 
to  please  nor  displease  you ;  but  to  provoke  you 
to  think;  to  lead  you  to  think  accurately;  and 
help  you  to  form,  perhaps,  some  different 
opinions  from  those  you  have  now. 

2.  Therefore,  I  choose  that  you  shall  pay 


A  Study  in  Personality       301 

me  the  price  of  two  pots  of  beer,  twelve  times 
in  the  year,  for  my  advice,  each  of  you  who 
wants  it.  If  you  like  to  think  of  me  as  a 
quack  doctor,  you  are  welcome;  and  you  may 
consider  the  large  margins,  and  thick  paper, 
and  ugly  pictures  of  my  book,  as  my  caravan, 
drum,  and  skeleton.  You  would  probably,  if 
invited  in  that  manner,  buy  my  pills;  and  I 
should  make  a  great  deal  of  money  out  of 
you;  but  being  an  honest  doctor,  I  still  mean 
you  to  pay  me  what  you  ought.  You  fancy, 
doubtless,  that  I  write — as  most  other  political 
writers  do — my  "opinions";  and  that  one 
man's  opinion  is  as  good  as  another's.  You  are 
much  mistaken.  When  I  only  opine  things,  I 
hold  my  tongue;  and  work  till  I  more  than 
opine — until  I  know  them.  If  the  things  prove 
unknowable,  I,  with  final  perseverance,  hold 
my  tongue  about  them,  and  recommend  a  like 
practice  to  other  people.  If  the  things  prove 
knowable,  as  soon  as  I  know  them,  I  am  ready 
to  write  about  them,  if  need  be;  not  till  then. 
That  is  what  people  call  my  "  arrogance." 
They  write  and  talk  themselves,  habitually,  of 
what  they  know  nothing  about ;  they  cannot  in 
anywise  conceive  the  state  of  mind  of  a  person 
who  will  not  speak  till  he  knows ;  and  then  tells 
them,  serenely:  "This  is  so;  you  may  find  it 
out  for  yourselves,  if  you  choose;  but,  however 
little  you  may  choose  it,  the  thing  is  still  so." 


302  Ruskin 

3.  Now  it  has  cost  me  twenty  years  of 
thought,  and  of  hard  reading,  to  learn  what 
I  have  to  tell  you  in  these  pamphlets ;  and  you 
will  find,  if  you  choose  to  find,  it  is  true;  and 
may  prove,  if  you  choose  to  prove,  that  it  is 
useful:  and  I  am  not  in  the  least  minded  to 
compete  for  your  audience  with  the  "  opin- 
ions "  in  your  damp  journals,  morning  and 
evening,  the  black  of  them  coming  off  on  your 
fingers,  and — beyond  all  washing — into  your 
brains.  It  is  no  affair  of  mine  whether  you 
attend  to  me  or  not;  but  yours  wholly;  my 
hand  is  weary  of  pen-holding — my  heart  is 
sick  of  thinking;  for  my  own  part,  I  would 
not  write  you  these  pamphlets  though  you 
would  give  me  a  barrel  of  beer,  instead  of  two 
pints,  for  them : — I  write  them  wholly  for  your 
sake;  I  choose  that  you  shall  have  them  de- 
cently printed  on  cream-coloured  paper,  and 
with  a  margin  underneath,  which  you  can 
write  on,  if  you  like.  That  is  also  for  your 
sake;  it  is  a  proper  form  of  book  for  any  man 
to  have  who  can  keep  his  books  clean;  and  if 
he  cannot,  he  has  no  business  with  books  at 
all.  It  costs  me  ten  pounds  to  print  a  thou- 
sand copies,  and  five  more  to  give  you  a  pic- 
ture; and  a  penny  off  my  seven  pence  to  send 
you  the  book: — a  thousand  sixpences  are 
twenty-five  pounds;  when  you  have  bought  a 
thousand  Fors  of  me,  I  shall  therefore  have 


A  Study  in  Personality       303 

five  pounds  for  my  trouble — and  my  single 
shopman,  Mr.  Allen,  five  pounds  for  his;  we 
won't  work  for  less,  either  of  us;  not  that  we 
would  not,  were  it  good  for  you ;  but  it  would 
be  by  no  means  good.  And  I  mean  to  sell  all 
my  large  books,  henceforward,  in  the  same 
way;  well  printed,  well  bound,  and  at  a  fixed 
price;  and  the  trade  may  charge  a  proper  and 
acknowledged  profit  for  their  trouble  in  retail- 
ing the  book.  Then  the  public  will  know  what 
they  are  about,  and  so  will  tradesmen;  I,  the 
first  producer,  answer,  to  the  best  of  my  power, 
for  the  quality  of  the  book; — paper,  binding, 
eloquence,  and  all:  the  retail  dealer  charges 
what  he  ought  to  charge,  openly;  and  if  the 
public  do  not  choose  to  give  it,  they  can't  get 
the  book.  That  is  what  I  call  legitimate  busi- 
ness. Then  as  for  this  misunderstanding  of 
me — remember  that  it  is  really  not  easy  to 
understand  anything,  which  you  have  not  heard 
before,  if  it  relates  to  a  complex  subject;  also, 
it  is  quite  easy  to  misunderstand  things  that 
you  are  hearing  every  day — which  seem  to  you 
of  the  intelligiblest  sort.  But  I  can  only  write 
of  things  in  my  own  way  and  as  they  come 
into  my  head;  and  of  the  things  I  care  for, 
whether  you  care  for  them  or  not,  as  yet.  I 
will  answer  for  it,  you  must  care  for  some  of 
them  in  time. 
4.  To  take  an  instance  close  to  my  hand: 


304  Ruskin 

you  would  of  course  think  it  little  conducive 
to  your  interests  that  I  should  give  you  any 
account  of  the  wild  hyacinths  which  are  open- 
ing in  flakes  of  blue  fire,  this  day,  within  a 
couple  of  miles  of  me,  in  the  glades  of  Bagley 
wood  through  which  the  Empress  Maud  fled 
in  the  snow  (and  which,  by  the  way,  I  slink 
through,  myself,  in  some  discomfort,  lest  the 
gamekeeper  of  the  college  of  the  gracious 
Apostle  St.  John  should  catch  sight  of  me ;  not 
that  he  would  ultimately  decline  to  make  a 
distinction  between  a  poacher  and  a  professor, 
but  that  I  dislike  the  trouble  of  giving  an  ac- 
count of  myself).  Or,  if  even  you  would  bear 
with  a  scientific  sentence  or  two  about  them, 
explaining  to  you  that  they  were  only  green 
leaves  turned  blue,  and  that  it  was  of  no  con- 
sequence whether  they  were  either  green  or 
blue;  and  that,  as  flowers,  they  were  scientific- 
ally to  be  considered  as  not  in  existence, — 
you  will,  I  fear,  throw  my  letter,  even  though 
it  has  cost  you  sevenpence,  aside  at  once,  when 
I  remark  to  you  that  these  wood-hyacinths  of 
Bagley  have  something  to  do  with  the  battle 
of  Marathon,  and,  if  you  knew  it,  are  of 
more  vital  interest  to  you  than  even  the  Match 
Tax. 

5.  Nevertheless,  as  I  shall  feel  it  my  duty, 
some  day,  to  speak  to  you  of  Theseus  and  his 
vegetable  soup,  so,  to-day,  I  think  it  neces- 


A  Study  in  Personality       305 

sary  to  tell  you  that  the  wood-hyacinth  is  the 
best  English  representative  of  the  tribe  of 
flowers  which  the  Greeks  called  "  Asphodel," 
and  which  they  thought  the  heroes  who  had 
fallen  in  the  battle  of  Marathon,  or  in  any 
other  battle,  fought  in  just  quarrel,  were  to 
be  rewarded,  and  enough  rewarded,  by  living 
in  fields-full  of;  fields  called,  by  them,  Elysian, 
or  the  Fields  of  Coming,  as  you  and  I  talk  of 
the  good  time  "  Coming,"  though  with  perhaps 
different  views  as  to  the  nature  of  the  to  be 
expected  goodness. 


And  last  of  all  he  wrote  the  Prwterita. 
Much  of  it  was  only  gathered  afresh  from 
the  pages  of  Fors  Clavigera.  But  here  I 
think  that,  in  spite  of  age  and  shattered 
health  and  broken  mind,  the  art  is  at  its 
very  highest.  The  brain  gathers  itself  to- 
gether for  a  last  effort  before  the  silence 
falls.  And  here  no  doubt  many  readers 
who  cannot  find  their  way  through  the  be- 
wildering tangle  of  Fors,  can  join  hands 
again ;  because  here  again  the  mood  is  a 
sustained  one.  It  is  like  a  man  high  on 
a  mountain  range,  seeing  through  a  gap 


306  Ruskin 

of  ragged  cloud  and  sweeping  storm  the 
sunny  spaces  of  the  valley  he  has  left  be- 
hind, and  to  which  he  may  no  more  return, 
tracing  his  happy  wanderings  by  hedge  and 
stream,  watching  the  smoke  go  up  from 
the  chimneys  of  the  house  that  has  shel- 
tered alike  his  radiant  hopes  and  his  quiet 
dreams ;  and  seeing  it  all  through  a  passion 
of  sadness  and  failure  and  disappointment, 
which  is  too  deep  for  any  tear  or  sigh. 
There  are  passages  in  Prceterita  which  seem 
to  me  like  wreckage  sinking  through  the 
sea-depths,  leaving  the  rout  and  fury  of 
screaming  wind  and  wide-flung  billow,  and 
grounding  at  last  softly  and  quietly  upon 
the  unstirred  sand,  with  no  further  to  go, 
no  resurrection  to  dread.  The  cup  of  wrath 
has  been  drunk,  the  last  sad  drops  of  the 
potion  wrung  out;  he  has  experienced  in 
life  what  others  only  experience  in  death, 
and  he  can  say  with  bowed  head  and  fail- 
ing lip,  "  It  is  over." 
Here  are  two  characteristic  passages : 

The  first  joy  of  the  year  being  in  its  snow- 


A  Study  in  Personality       307 

drops,  the  second,  and  cardinal  one,  was  in 
the  almond  blossom, — every  other  garden  and 
woodland  gladness  following  from  that  in  an 
unbroken  order  of  kindling  flower  and  shadowy 
leaf;  and  for  many  and  many  a  year  to  come, 
—until  indeed,  the  whole  of  life  became  au- 
tumn to  me, — my  chief  prayer  for  the  kindness 
of  heaven,  in  its  flowerful  seasons,  was  that 
the  frost  might  not  touch  the  almond  blossom. 

And  again : 

My  delight  in  these  cottages,  and  in  the 
sense  of  human  industry  and  enjoyment 
through  the  whole  scene,  was  at  the  root  of 
all  pleasure  in  its  beauty;  see  the  passage 
afterwards  written  in  the  Seven  Lamps  insist- 
ing on  this  as  if  it  were  general  to  human  na- 
ture thus  to  admire  through  sympathy.  I  have 
noticed  since,  with  sorrowful  accuracy,  how 
many  people  there  are  who,  wherever  they  find 
themselves,  think  only  "  of  their  position." 
But  the  feeling  which  gave  me  so  much  hap- 
piness, both  then  and  through  life,  differed 
also  curiously,  in  its  impersonal  character, 
from  that  of  many  even  of  the  best  and  kindest 
persons. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  Carlyle-Emerson 
correspondence,  edited  with  too  little  com- 
ment by  my  dear  friend  Charles  Norton,  I 


308  Ruskin 

find  at  page  18  this — to  me  entirely  disputable, 
and  to  my  thought,  so  far  as  undisputed, 
much  blamable  and  pitiable,  exclamation  of 
my  master's :  "  Not  till  we  can  think  that 
here  and  there  one  is  thinking  of  us,  one 
is  loving  us,  does  this  waste  earth  become 
a  peopled  garden."  My  training,  as  the  reader 
has  perhaps  enough  perceived,  produced  in 
me  the  precisely  opposite  sentiment.  My 
times  of  happiness  had  always  been  when  no- 
body was  thinking  of  me;  and  the  main  dis- 
comfort and  drawback  to  all  proceedings  and 
designs,  the  attention  and  interference  of  the 
public — represented  by  my  mother  and  the 
gardener.  The  garden  was  no  waste  place  to 
me,  because  I  did  not  suppose  myself  an  ob- 
ject of  interest  either  to  the  ants  or  the  butter- 
flies; and  the  only  qualification  of  the  entire 
delight  of  my  evening  walk  at  Champagnole  or 
St.  Laurent  was  the  sense  that  my  father  and 
mother  were  thinking  of  me,  and  would  be 
frightened  if  I  was  five  minutes  late  for  tea. 

I  don't  mean  in  the  least  that  I  could  have 
done  without  them.  They  were,  to  me,  much 
more  than  Carlyle's  wife  to  him ;  and  if  Car- 
lyle  had  written,  instead  of,  that  he  wanted 
Emerson  to  think  of  him  in  America,  that  he 
wanted  his  father  and  mother  to  be  thinking 
of  him  at  Ecclefechan,  it  had  been  well.  But 
that  the  rest  of  the  world  was  waste  to  him 


A  Study  in  Personality       309 

unless  he  had  admirers  in  it,  is  a  sorry  state 
of  sentiment  enough;  and  I  am  somewhat 
tempted,  for  once,  to  admire  the  exactly  op- 
posite temper  of  my  own  solitude.  My  entire 
delight  was  in  observing  without  being  myself 
noticed, — if  I  could  have  been  invisible,  all  the 
better.  I  was  absolutely  interested  in  men 
and  their  ways,  as  I  was  interested  in  mar- 
mots and  chamois,  in  tomtits  and  trout.  If 
only  they  would  stay  still  and  let  me  look  at 
them,  and  not  get  into  their  holes  and  up 
their  heights!  The  living  inhabitation  of  the 
world — the  grazing  and  nesting  in  it, — the 
spiritual  power  of  the  air,  the  rocks,  the  waters, 
— to  be  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  rejoice  and 
wonder  at  it,  and  help  it  if  I  could, — happier 
if  it  needed  no  help  of  mine, — this  was  the 
essential  love  of  Nature  in  me,  this  the  root 
of  all  that  I  have  usefully  become,  and  the 
light  of  all  that  I  have  rightly  learned. 


Now  the  strange  thing  behind  it  all  is 
this — and  what  I  am  about  to  say  involves 
a  clear  statement  about  the  critical  appre- 
hension of  the  British  public  which  must 
not  be  confused  with  censure  or  contempt. 
It  is  neither.  It  is  simply  a  fact.  Ruskin 


310  Ruskin 

attained  his  position  in  the  literary  world, 
and  in  the  view  of  many  worthy  persons 
maintains  it  now,  by  work  that  was  not 
only  inferior,  but  was  pervaded  by  gross 
faults  of  dogmatism,  erring  knowledge,  and 
baseless  judgments.  His  best  work  is  still 
to  a  great  extent  unappreciated  and  un- 
praised,  his  genius  hardly  suspected.  The 
British  public  wanted  correct  information, 
impressive  argument,  and  conventional  con- 
clusions. What  was  the  joy  of  that  stolid 
and  pathetic  clientele,  when  it  found  a  man 
who  could  bully  them  into  thinking  that 
they  cared  about  art,  tell  them  exactly  what 
pictures  to  buy  and  what  to  neglect,  give 
eloquent  reasons  which  made  them  believe 
they  had  gone  to  the  bottom  of  the  matter, 
and  then — the  crowning  joy  of  all — tell 
them  with  thunders  of  conviction  that  the 
old  moral  law  held  good  there  as  every- 
where, that  the  bad  man  was  the  bad  artist 
and  the  good  man  the  good  artist.  It  was 
a  prodigious  and  colossal  error ;  but  it  went 
straight  to  the  heart  of  the  nation;  it  con- 


A  Study  in  Personality       311 

firmed  the  Psalms  of  David  and  the  law 
of  Moses;  it  fitted  in,  or  so  they  thought, 
with  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel  and  St. 
Paul.  They  were  delighted  when  Ruskin 
said :  "  In  these  books  of  mine,  their  dis- 
tinctive character,  as  essays  on  art,  is  their 
bringing  everything  to  a  root  in  human  pas- 
sion or  human  hope  .  .  .  every  principle 
of  painting  which  I  have  stated  is  traced 
to  some  vital  or  spiritual  fact  .  .  .  and  is 
founded  on  a  comparison  of  their  influences 
on  the  life  of  the  workman,  a  question  by 
all  other  writers  on  the  subject  wholly 
forgotten  or  despised."  At  such  a  state- 
ment as  this  the  enthusiasm  of  the  public 
knew  no  bounds,  because  not  only  did  it 
issue  from  a  graduate  of  Oxford,  and  thus 
had  the  stamp  of  academic  culture,  but  it 
was  a  conclusion  worthy  of  a  sermon,  with 
this  additional  advantage  that  it  was  not 
a  statement  made  by  a  clergyman  from  a 
pulpit,  and  thus  open  to  a  suspicion  of 
professional  motive,  but  made  by  a  layman 
in  a  book  of  art  criticism,  and  was  thus  a 


312  Ruskin 

confirmation  of  the  most  respectable  sort 
of  morality,  from  a  source  which  might 
naturally  have  been  liable  to  a  charge  of 
dangerous  Bohemianism. 

It  was  this  that  gave  Ruskin  his  author- 
ity; though  there  were  of  course  a  few 
who  saw  somewhat  deeper  and  realised 
that  there  were  in  the  utterances  of  Rus- 
kin a  passionate  emotion  and  a  sincere 
fidelity  to  truth,  only  obscured  by  nat- 
ural dogmatism  and  a  rigid  Calvinistic 
training. 

And  then  came  the  years  when  he  seemed 
to  throw  aside  wantonly  and  quixotically 
all  the  influence  he  had  gained,  and  to  flour- 
ish in  the  face  of  the  public  all  sorts  of 
crazy  fancies  and  impossible  dreams.  In 
these  years  he  was  greatly  discredited, 
though  at  last  the  sale  of  his  books  wrent 
up  by  leaps  and  bounds.  The  most  chari- 
table hypothesis  freely  indulged  was  that 
he  was  out  of  his  mind.  Nothing  else  could 
account  for  such  ludicrous  sincerity  and 
such  delirious  schemes.  But  by  this  time 


A  Study  in  Personality       313 

many  true  spirits  had  discerned  him  rightly, 
and  saw  that  if  he  was  fallen  into  a  pas- 
sion of  irritability  and  disgust,  he  was 
crazed  not  by  disease  but  by  the  pressure 
of  desperate  thoughts.  Perhaps  his  Pro- 
fessorship a  little  rehabilitated  him  in  the 
eyes  of  the  outer  public.  And  then  he  did 
what  is  the  most  popular  thing  that  one 
can  do  in  England,  an  act  which  sets  the 
crown  upon  any  amount  of  even  inefficient 
endeavour:  he  grew  old,  and  became  a 
public  pet — a  grand  old  man. 

There  is  something  to  smile  at  in  all  this, 
no  doubt;  but  there  is  food  for  something 
more  like  tears.  Perhaps  the  point  is  that, 
with  his  best  unrecognised  and  with  his 
secret  misunderstood,  he  yet  had  gained  a 
hearing;  and  it  may  be  that  thus  his  real 
influence  will  grow  and  bear  fruit.  But 
the  process  is  so  gigantically  stupid  and 
so  outrageously  coarse — the  sense  that  de- 
risive notoriety  can  achieve  what  genius  and 
worth  could  not  attain,  is  not  without  its 
shadow.  The  horror  of  it  is  this,  that  the 


3H  Ruskin 

frenzied  writings  of  his  tortured  mind 
amused  the  public.  They  did  not  see  that 
he  was  being  crucified.  They  thought  his 
agonised  words  the  fantastic  mockeries  of 
a  man  who  had  lost  his  temper  on  a  gigantic 
scale;  and  it  was  this  that  made  them  listen. 
It  is  all  a  very  dark  business.  But  we 
must  try  to  put  it  all  aside,  and  to  stand 
if  we  can  with  the  faithful  few  that  stood 
helpless  and  distracted  beside  him  in  the 
hour  of  his  agony,  rather  than  with  those 
that  mocked  him  afar  off,  or  that  as  they 
passed  by  reviled  him. 


And  last  of  all  I  must  say  one  word 
about  his  letters,  because  that  is  a  very 
real  province  of  literary  art.  We  are  past 
the  time,  and  we  may  be  wholly  thankful 
for  it,  when  a  man  like  Pope  kept  copies  of 
his  letters,  improved  them,  added  footnotes 
and  introductions,  and  finally  arranged  that 
they  should  be  stolen  from  him  in  a  friendly 


A  Study  in  Personality       315 

manner  and  published  without  his  supposed 
consent,  and  against  his  imagined  wish, 
though  he  had  prepared  alike  beforehand 
the  theft  and  his  own  heart-broken  protests. 
But  we  have  had  many  fine  letter-writers 
in  England.  To  mention  but  a  few,  the 
letters  of  Gray  are  models  of  delicate  taste, 
exquisite  phrasing,  and  charming  humour. 
The  letters  of  Charles  Lamb  are  notable 
for  their  tenderness,  their  good  sense,  and 
their  delicious  extravagance.  The  letters 
of  Keats  give  the  finest  revelation  I  know 
of  the  glowing  heart  and  mind  of  a  young 
and  splendid  genius.  The  letters  of  Fitz- 
Gerald  are  full  of  leisurely  charm,  gentle 
pathos,  and  keen  discrimination.  The  let- 
ters of  Carlyle  have  an  intense  and  rugged 
glow,  and  a  marvellous  individuality  of 
deeply-felt,  contorted  phrases,  where  the 
words  are  driven  in  gangs,  like  fettered 
slaves,  to  do  their  master's  work.  The  let- 
ters of  Mrs.  Browning  reveal  a  passion  and 
a  seriousness  that  cannot  fail  to  inspire  and 
even  to  shame  one's  coldness.  But  I  should 


3i  6  Ruskin 

put  Ruskin  at  the  head  of  all.  Like  a  great 
coinage  of  a  king,  every  tiniest  token  bears 
his  visible  and  noble  imprint.  All  through 
his  life,  a  part  of  his  day's  work  was  writ- 
ing letters;  and  he  threw  himself  with  his 
utmost  force  and  his  sensitive  sympathy 
into  the  very  mind  and  heart  of  his  corre- 
spondent. I  have  said  before  how  his  let- 
ters to  men  of  marked  individuality  bear 
unmistakable  traces,  in  their  words  and 
phrases,  of  being  transfused  with  the  im- 
agined thoughts  of  their  recipients.  And 
then,  too,  every  smallest  letter  that  he 
wrote  was  a  part  of  himself.  There  are 
two  large  volumes  of  them  in  the  big  edi- 
tion of  his  works,  and  there  must  be  hund- 
reds more  in  existence.  Only  the  other  day 
I  stumbled  upon  a  great  collection  of  them, 
written  to  a  girl  whom  he  had  never  seen, 
and  all  growing  out  of  one  simple  and 
sincere  question  which  she  had  asked  him. 

It  was  here  that  his  extraordinary  power 
of  transition  helped  him.  He  could  pass 
from  simple  gossip  to  deep  pathos,  from 


A  Study  in  Personality       317 

unaffected  simplicity  to  pettish  and  ex- 
travagant censure,  from  caressing  tender- 
ness to  poignant  irony.  He  never  said  less 
or  more  than  he  thought  and  felt;  but  the 
grace  and  beauty  with  which  he  invested  it 
all,  was  born  of  no  effort  or  taking  thought; 
it  was  simply  himself.  One  of  my  hearers 
brought  me  the  other  day,  after  a  lecture, 
a  dozen  letters  of  Ruskin's  that  he  had 
picked  up  in  a  curiosity  shop.  There  it  was, 
that  whimsical  and  solemn  charm — a  letter 
of  almost  heart-rending  sorrow,  speaking  of 
his  need  for  human  affection,  just  salted  at 
the  end  out  of  sentimentality  by  a  pungent 
phrase  of  irony,  in  which  he  stood  aside 
and  smilingly  surveyed  his  own  dismay. 
Part  of  his  mysterious  attractiveness  was 
that  he  could  speak  so  frankly  of  himself 
and  his  failures,  with  such  passionate  sin- 
cerity, and  then  make  light  of  it  all,  as 
the  self-pity  melted  under  humorous  per- 
ception. There  is  plenty  of  bitterness,  but 
no  spite;  abundant  pettishness,  but  not  a 
trace  of  pettiness.  Of  course  it  is  easy  to 


3*8  Ruskin 

call  them  egotistical;  and  I  do  not  attempt 
to  deny  that  Ruskin  took  a  deep  interest 
in  himself — we  most  of  us  do.  But  ego- 

o 

tism  is  the  taking  oneself  solemnly  and  seri- 
ously, with  a  gloomy  and  self -regarding 
pomposity,  and  Ruskin  never  did  that.  He 
was  full  of  intense  personal  feeling,  was 
profoundly  convinced  of  the  worth  and 
significance  of  his  message,  sorrowed  poign- 
antly over  his  ineffectiveness,  and  the  mis- 
guided way  in  which  he  was  misinterpreted. 
But  just  when  the  shower  is  falling  heavily, 
till  the  world  seems  dissolved  in  wet,  there 
comes  a  gleam  of  dancing  sunshine  with  a 
tint  of  sapphire  sky,  which  makes  even  the 
slanting  rain  beautiful,  and  dashes  a  gleam 
of  gold  upon  drenched  leaf  and  watery  rut. 
I  should  do  him  wrong  if  I  insisted  too 
much  upon  his  sorrow  and  heaviness,  for 
there  was  a  strain  of  real  gaiety  about  him, 
which  made  him  love  all  young  and  joyful 
and  light-hearted  things.  I  will  give  two 
or  three  of  those  letters  in  illustration  of 
all  this : 


A  Study  in  Personality       319 

I  knew  you  would  deeply  feel  the  death  of 
Dickens.  It  is  very  frightful  to  me — among 
the  blows  struck  by  the  fates  at  worthy  men, 
while  all  mischievous  ones  have  ceaseless 
strength.  The  literary  loss  is  infinite — the 
poetical  one  I  care  less  for  than  you  do. 
Dickens  was  a  pure  modernist — a  leader  of 
the  steam-whistle  party  par  excellence — and  he 
had  no  understanding  of  any  power  of  an- 
tiquity except  a  sort  of  jackdaw  sentiment  for 
cathedral  towers.  He  knew  nothing  of  the 
nobler  power  of  superstition — was  essentially 
a  stage  manager,  and  used  everything  for  ef- 
fect on  the  pit.  His  Christmas  meant  mistle- 
toe and  pudding — neither  resurrection  from 
dead,  nor  rising  of  new  stars,  nor  teaching 
of  wise  men,  nor  shepherds.  His  hero  is 
essentially  the  ironmaster;  in  spite  of  Hard 
Times,  he  has  advanced  by  his  influence 
every  principle  that  makes  them  harder — the 
love  of  excitement,  in  all  classes,  and  the  fury 
of  business  competition,  and  the  distrust 
both  of  nobility  and  clergy  which,  wide 
enough  and  fatal  enough,  and  too  justly 
founded,  needed  no  apostle  to  the  mob,  but 
a  grave  teacher  of  priests  and  nobles  them- 
selves, from  whom  Dickens  had  essentially  no 
word.  .  .  . 

And  again: 


320  Ruskin 

[The  letters]  of  Emerson  and  Carlyle  came 
to  me  about  a  week  since,  and  I  am  nearly 
through  them,  grateful  heartily  for  the  book, 
and  the  masterful  index;  but  much  dis- 
appointed at  having  no  word  of  epitaph  from 
yourself  on  both  the  men. 

The  Emerson  letters  are  infinitely  sweet  and 
wise:  here  and  there,  as  in  p.  30.  vol.  ii.,  un- 
intelligible to  me.  C.'s,  like  all  the  words 
of  him  published  since  his  death,  have  vexed 
me,  and  partly  angered,  with  their  per- 
petual me  miserum — never  seeming  to  feel 
the  extreme  ill  manners  of  this  perpetual 
whine;  and,  to  what  one  dares  not  call  an 
affected,  but  a  quite  unconsciously  false  ex- 
tent, hiding  the  more  or  less  of  pleasure 
which  a  strong  man  must  have  in  using 
his  strength,  be  it  but  in  heaving  aside  dust- 
heaps. 

What  in  my  own  personal  way  I  chiefly  re- 
gret and  wonder  at  in  him  is,  the  perception 
in  all  nature  of  nothing  between  the  stars  and 
his  stomach — his  going,  for  instance,  into 
North  Wales  for  two  months,  and  noting  ab- 
solutely no  Cambrian  thing  or  event,  but  only 
increase  of  Carlylian  bile. 

Not  that  I  am  with  you  in  thinking  Froude 
wrong  about  the  Reminiscences.  They  are  to 
me  full  of  his  strong  insight,  and  in  their 
distress  far  more  pathetic  than  these  howl- 


A  Study  in  Personality       321 

ings  of  his  earlier  life  about  Cromwell  and 
others  of  his  quite  best  works;  but  I  am 
vexed  for  want  of  a  proper  Epilogue  of  your 
own.  .  .  . 

How  much  better  right  than  C.  have  I  to 
say,  "  Ay  de  mi  "  ? 

I  will  only  say  one  word  in  conclusion. 
I  would  not  persuade  any  one  to  try  and 
write  like  Ruskin,  though  he  was  probably 
the  greatest  master  of  English  prose,  in  his 
variety,  his  copiousness,  the  lucidity,  and 
the  perennial  beauty  of  his  expression ;  but 
just  as  one  cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  one 
cannot  write  by  imitation.  It  is  a  very 
elementary  literary  exercise  to  parody  a 
style,  and  Ruskin  lends  himself  easily  to 
parody.  Indeed  his  style  is  so  contagious 
that  if  one  reads  him  much  and  attentively, 
one  finds  it  hard  not  to  write  like  him; 
like  him,  I  say,  yet  ah,  how  far  away! 
But  every  writer  must  find  his  own  method 
of  expression,  and  no  man  can  look 
his  best  in  borrowed  clothes.  The  curva- 
ture of  the  owner  hangs  indelibly  about 
them. 


322  Ruskin 

But  on  the  other  hand,  as  I  have  tried 
to  show,  there  are  few  writers  of  whom  the 
word  great  can  be  used  so  incontestably. 
While  other  writers  have  been  like  per- 
formers in  a  great  orchestra,  spouting 
melody  from  a  silver-mouthed  trumpet,  or 
drawing  out  the  thrill  and  shiver  of  the 
tense  string,  Ruskin  seems  to  me  like  a 
great  organist,  manipulating  and  combining 
and  hushing  the  huge  house  of  sound,  with 
its  myriad  pipes  and  ranked  ingenuities. 
There  is  no  writer — and  this  is,  I  humbly 
believe,  the  end  and  crown  of  art — who 
could  express  so  perfectly,  so  sweetly,  so 
truly,  the  thought  that  rose  swiftly  and 
burningly  in  his  mind.  He  could  flash  out, 
with  a  deft  turn  of  his  wrist,  a  stop  of 
shrill  emotion,  and  keep  a  dozen  moods  all 
in  full  play  at  once,  combining  and  elud- 
ing and  charming,  in  a  sequence  at  once 
orderly  and  profound.  We  may  read  Rus- 
kin then  primarily  for  the  glow  and  beauty 
that  he  casts  on  life;  but  not  forget  that 
half  that  thought  must  have  been  dumb, 


A  Study  in  Personality       323 

its  deepest  feeling  and  its  lightest  grace 
unuttered,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  art 
which,  through  endless  labour,  widest  sym- 
pathy, and  sternest  purpose,  gave  him  the 
power  to  tell  his  secret  so  that  all  can  un- 
derstand. These  are  the  two  conditions  of 
art:  that  a  man  should  have  something  in 
him  that  is  worth  telling  and  making  plain ; 
and  after  that  that  he  should  spare  no 
trouble,  despise  no  criticism,  and  yet  be 
disheartened  by  no  rebuke,  from  saying  the 
thoughts  of  his  heart  as  calmly,  as  clearly, 
and  as  expressively  as  he  can. 


THE  END 


Books  by  Arthur  Christopher  Benson 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 

FAMILIAR  essays  are  rare,  and  far  rarer  than 
more  formal  critical  writings  of  a  like  qual- 
ity.    It  is  with  this  literary  kind  that  Mr. 
Benson's   work — the   best  of  it  at  least — is  to  be 
classed.     His  books  are  the  frank  outpourings  of 
the  author's  innermost  thoughts,  and  treat,  in  an 
easy  confidential  manner  that  presupposes  a  single 
friendly  listener,  matters  that  "  go  home  to  men's 
business  and  bosoms." 

When  the  reader  puts  down  these  delightful 
volumes  by  Mr.  Benson,  he  may  rest  assured  that 
he  will  do  so  with  the  feeling  that  he  has  been 
in  good  company  and  has  passed  his  time  with 
pleasure  and  profit.  And  finally  he  will  perhaps 
be  puzzled  to  determine  whether  he  has  been 
better  pleased  with  the  substantial  thought  of 
the  book  or  with  the  urbanity  and  gentleman- 
like ease,  the  freshness  and  distinction  of  the. 
diction,  the  fluency,  and  the  varied  cadences  that 
combine  to  make  this  new  essayist's  style  so 
charming,  and  charge  it  with  the  magnetism  of 
a  singularly  interesting  and  attractive  personality. 

For  list  of  volumes  see  the  following  pages, 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


By  Arthur  Christopher  Benson 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 

ijth  Impression 

The  Upton  Letters 

A  Companion  Volume  to  "The  Schoolmaster" 

Crown  Svo.     $1.25  net 

"  A  book  that  we  have  read  and  reread  if  only  for  the  sake  of  its 
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Etchingham  Letters,  The  letters  are  beautiful,  quiet,  and  wise,  dealing 
with  deep  things  in  a  dignified  way."  —  Christian  Register. 

"  A  piece  of  real  literature  of  the  highest  order,  beautiful  and  fragrant. 
To  review  the  book  adequately  is  impossible.  .  .  .  It  is  in  truth  a 
precious  thing."  —  Weekly  Survey. 

ijth  Impression 

From  a  College  Window 

Crown  Svo.     $1.25  net 

"Mr.  Benson  has  written  nothing  equal  to  this  mellow  and  full- 
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phase  to  phase  it  reveals  a  thoroughly  sincere  and  unaffected  effort  of 
self-expression  j  full-orbed  and  four-square,  it  is  a  piece  of  true  and  simple 
literature."  —  London  Chronicle. 

jjth  Impression 


Beside  Still  Waters 

Crown  Svo.     $1.25  net 

"A  delightful  essayist.     .     .     .     This  book  is  the  ripest,  thought- 
fulest,  best  piece  of  work  its  author  has  yet  produced."  —  The  Dial. 

"  It  is  a  graceful,  charming  book,  lucidly  and  beautifully  written."  — 

N.  y.  su*. 

grd  Impression 

The  Silent  Isle 

Crown  Svo. 

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Q.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


By  Arthur  Christopher  Benson 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 

John  Ruskin 

A  Study  in  Personality 

Crown  8vo.     $1.50  net.     By  mail,  $1.65 

Readers  who  know  Mr.  Benson's  proclivities  and  the 
bent  of  his  thought  will  realize  that  a  character  like  that  of 
Ruskin,  high  thinking  and  idealistic,  would  receive  from  a 
biographer  so  delicately  attuned  to  the  finer  spirit  of  life  a 
full  measure  of  understanding  and  sympathetic  treatment. 

Mr.  Benson  himself  affirms  that  the  book  is  "written 
with  a  sincere  love  and  admiration,  and  with  a  strong  belief 
that  Ruskin's  message  and  example  have  a  very  real  truth  and 
strength  of  their  own,  urgently  needed  in  these  hasty  and 
impulsive  days."  The  latter  part  of  this  statement  is  the 
more  interesting,  because  it  indicates  that  in  the  judgment 
of  a  man  whose  opinions  are,  by  a  very  large  group  of  readers, 
considered  authoritative,  Ruskin's  teachings  are  again  assum- 
ing an  importance  which  for  a  time  was  denied  them  by  many 
critics. 

SPECIAL  LIBRARY  EDITION  of  The  Upton  Let- 
ters— Beside  Still  Waters — From  a  College  Window. 
Limited  to  500  sets.  3  vols.,  8vo.  Printed  on  Old  Strat- 
ford linen.  Handsomely  bound,  gilt  tops,  deckle  edges. 
Sold  in  sets  only.  $7.50  net. 

Q.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


By  Arthur  Christopher  Benson 

Fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge 


mpression 

The  Altar  Fire 

Crown  8vo,     $1.50  net 

"Once  more  Mr.  Benson  has  put  forth  one  of  his  appealing  and  elo- 
quent studies  in  human  motive  ;  and  once  more  he  ha?  succeeded,  with 
unfailing  certainty  of  touch,  in  getting  out  of  his  study  a  remarkable  and 
impressive  effect.  —  London  Chronicle. 

2nd  Impression 

The  Schoolmaster 

A  Commentary  upon  the  Aims  and  Methods  of  an  Assistant- 
Master  in  a  Public  School 

A  Companion  Volume  to  "  The  Upton  Letters  " 

Crown  8vo.     $1.25  net 

"The  quaint  philosophy  of  life,  keen  insight  into  human  nature,  and 
delicate  appreciation  of  the  finer  sensibilities  inherent  in  even  the  average 
"  small  boy's  "  inner  consciousness  combine  in  making  the  volume  an 
agency  of  moral  uplift  as  well  as  an  educational  inspiration."  —  Columbus 
Dispatch. 

"  Mr.  Benson  covers  the  whole  field  of  scholastic  life  and  everything 
that  he  writes  is  a  delight  to  read."  —  The  Argonaut. 

4th  Impression 

At  Large 

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In  the  essay  Mr.  Benson  is  at  his  best,  and  here  he  is  in  his  best  vein. 
An  atmosphere  of  rest  and  tranquil  thoughtfulness  envelops  the  reader, 
as  he  peruses  this  book  so  full  of  sage  reflection,  humor,  shrewd  observa- 
tion. and  serviceable  thought  ;  so  fluent,  accurate,  and  beautiful  in  style  ; 
so  pleasingly  varied  in  cadence. 

The  Gate  of  Death 

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since  In  Mcmoriam  has  presented  such  notable  claims  to  the  consider- 
ation of  popular  theology.  The  book  really  possesses  uncommon  beauty, 
and  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten  in  a  single  season  or  a  single  year."  — 
London  Telegraph. 

Q.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000129831     4 


